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Subject: Re: Strong Cryptography

Re: Strong Cryptography

From: Paul Louden <paulthenerd_at_gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2007 16:17:24 -0600

> That would sometimes work, yes, but I am unconvinced that it will be
> real-world faster for small amounts of data (If it takes .5 seconds,
> vs .01 seconds, who cares? Especially if I'd have to spend 5 minutes
> downloading and installing software on the public machine). If we're
> talking about gigabytes of data, then yes, you are certainly correct
> (this is definitely not my target use case).
What download and installation? You're talking about writing custom
encryption software here. Why not write a custom standalone binary,
compile it for Win32 and Linux and maybe OSX, and put those binaries on
your player? Again, much faster encryption and no downloading. You're
making an unfair comparison by saying that you'd have to download and
install all this software, vs having custom software made, when it's
really a comparison of having two different custom softwares made.

Yes, it does depend a lot on the size of the data you're encrypting, of
course, but I still don't see a real benefit to having file encryption
happen on the device side for the most part, unless you absolutely
cannot run your own code on the computer you're accessing. All the rest
of your arguments are negated once you accept that you're decrypting
with your own program either way.

I can see this as being useful for accessing small amounts of data that
you don't need to access on a PC (or specifically need access to without
a PC) yet don't want to risk someone else gaining control of if your DAP
is stolen (PIN numbers, passwords, etc) though, but a plugin
specifically designed for such a thing might even be better in that case.
Received on 2007-11-21

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