Aram Perez <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > So, if you folks care to educate me, I have several questions related > to entropy and information security (apologies to any physicists): > I'll answer the easier questions. I'll leave the harder ones for someone with a better grounding in information theory.
> * What is the relationship between randomness and entropy? Roughly, they both measure unpredictability. Something that is hard to predict is random, or has high entropy. There are mathematical formulations that make this a lot more precise, but that's the basic idea. > * Does processing an 8 character password with a process similar to > PKCS#5 increase the entropy of the password? Absolutely not! At best, you preserve the original entropy, just distributing it differently. If you get the processing wrong, you can reduce or even entirely destroy it, but no amount of any kind of processing can increase it. > * Can you add or increase entropy? > You can add more entropy, either from another source or more from the same source. That is the only way to increase it. -- Sandy Harris Zhuhai, Guangdong, China --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
