Greetings.
I'm the author of CPAN's Crypt::Tea_JS which implements the Tiny Encryption
Algorithm compatibly in Perl and JavaScript. It offers functions such as
$cyphertext = encrypt( $plaintext, $key );
$plainagain = decrypt( $cyphertext, $key );
The encryption, of course, works with octets. I've just (version 2.13)
introduced a first attempt at handling utf8 string arguments; this
is still undocumented so I can change it if there's a better way.
Currently, at the top of sub encrypt, there is:
use bytes;
...
sub encrypt { my ($str,$key)[EMAIL PROTECTED];
if ($] > 5.007 && Encode::is_utf8($str)) {
Encode::_utf8_off($str);
# $str = Encode::encode_utf8($str);
}
...
Is this the right sort of way to do it (e.g. functionality, portability) ?
It means that after decrypting again the is_utf8 information is lost;
But I don't see a way round that because 1) Perl's not the only language
involved, 2) putting encoding information into the cyphertext would break
backward compatibility and give an attacker a known-plaintext attack.
Would it be worth giving sub decrypt an option to decode the plaintext
into Perl's internal form (if it's well-formed), or should I leave
that to the user and the Encode module ?
Guidance gratefully received, Regards, Peter
Peter Billam, DPIWE/ILS/CIT/Servers, hbt/lnd/l8, 6233 3061
