Re: unbreakable code? with cash prizes

[staym]

I wrote the author of the challenge.  He responded (quoted with
permission)

quote

If you had received my previous email, with accompnaying URL (below),
you would know how I encrypted this message and have my source code.

 Will you provide source to the encryption code?

Yes.  See:

http://www.well.com/user/abs/Crypto/

 Avoid software which uses secret algorithms. This is not considered a
 safe means of protecting data. If the vendor isn't confident that its
 encryption method can withstand scrutiny, then you should be wary of
 trusting it. 

I couldn't agree more.  That's why I'm inviting attack.

To be clear, the contents of message2.bin were created by xor-ing my
English plain text with a chunk of a jpg file which is NOT on the web.
It is a picture I took myself and scanned.  I am interested to see if
anyone can use statistical techniques or special knowledge of jpg's to
crack this without the key.
/quote

-- 
Mike Stay
Programmer / Crypto guy
AccessData Corp.
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: unbreakable code? with cash prizes

[Ben Laurie]

John Gilmore wrote:
 
 [I'm just forwarding this with the expectation that someone might want to
  try for the prize.  I don't know anything about the code.  -gnu]

No, no. You are forwarding it with the expectation that we'll all shout
"snake oil" loud enough to deafen you.

BTW, I offer $1,000 to anyone who can decrypt the hidden message in this
message.

Cheers,

Ben.

--
http://www.apache-ssl.org/ben.html

"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those
who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the
first group; there was less competition there."
 - Indira Gandhi