[sllug-members]: Encrypted backup tapes

[Corey Edwards]

On Thu, 2007-01-11 at 12:46 -0700, Corey Edwards wrote:
> A lot of encryption schemes, and I believe PGP is one of them, implement
> a compression step before the encryption. The idea is to increase the
> entropy. Plain text really isn't that random, whereas compression by
> design removes redundancy and is thus more random. A friend of mine did
> her master's thesis on the subject of measuring the randomness of
> compression algorithms by running them through compression. A truly
> random file would not compress at all and a well encrypted file should
> be indistinguishable from randomness.

Er, make that measuring the randomness of *encryption* algorithms by
running them through compression. Big words hurt brain. Me go back to
#utah. It no hurt head.

Corey