rotor alternative?

[Magnus Lie Hetland]

In article <87smkitutw.fsf at pobox.com>, John J. Lee wrote:
>Paul Rubin <http://phr.cx@NOSPAM.invalid> writes:
>
>> jjl at pobox.com (John J. Lee) writes:
>[...]
>> I don't know of any country that controls strong encryption and
>> doesn't control weak encryption.  Back before the US export controls
>[...]
>
>That's interesting.
>
>
>> > Second, if you have
>> > to have the key around anyway (true for some applications), it really
>> > doesn't matter how secure the algorithm is.
>> 
>> I'm not sure what you're getting at here.  The normal use of
>> cryptography is to transmit or store data that can be intercepted by
>> an attacker.  Obviously you don't transmit or store the key with the
>> data.
>
>Oh, do we have to go around this loop again?
>
>You can if your aim is _obfuscation_: simply to place a minimal
>barrier in front of people so they have to do something more than XOR
>some data.
[snip]

How about using rot13? At least it's build-in ;)

Wasn't the Adobe encryption for eBooks (which Sklyarov was imprisoned
for "cracking") something close to rot13?

http://zork.net/pipermail/free-sklyarov/2001-July/001045.html

Not exactly clever stuff, but quite funny :]

Hooray for 'Nqbor'.decode('rot13').

>John

-- 
Magnus Lie Hetland                "In this house we obey the laws of
http://hetland.org                 thermodynamics!"    Homer Simpson