Path: ...!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Ben Bacarisse Newsgroups: sci.crypt Subject: Re: Seriation Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2025 23:41:45 +0000 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 36 Message-ID: <8734giohmu.fsf@bsb.me.uk> References: <87ikphnz4m.fsf@bsb.me.uk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Injection-Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2025 00:41:45 +0100 (CET) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="557be70fb19e9cae4245d0fd170d3aaf"; logging-data="2684512"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX189H5mQ0gEmYeTI5/hxhm+2MJxKUhQWz9w=" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Cancel-Lock: sha1:RFbJ0xxN+B26Ex1sWK+AJiaFMVc= sha1:3KRC5WqawVadwZWExabmKZCt/TE= X-BSB-Auth: 1.eac18b3fee3b61607a5f.20250212234145GMT.8734giohmu.fsf@bsb.me.uk Bytes: 2915 Richard Heathfield writes: > On 10/02/2025 23:44, Ben Bacarisse wrote: >> Richard Heathfield writes: >> >>> On 04/02/2025 01:31, David Entwistle wrote: >> ... >>>> Yes, as I recall, and as a rather sloppy adversary unaware of your >>>> implementation, my character set ran from char(33) ! to char(126) ~. I >>>> think it was the gap between char(95) _ and char(97) a which caused me the >>>> most trouble. char(96) is top left on a QWERTY keyboard. I never use it, >>>> but it gets used as an apostrophe in some text on the web. As a result >>>> some of my checks failed to do what I expected and I didn't feel confident >>>> posting SCOS-based ciphers. >>> >>> Well, blow moi down with a feather! I had no idea! >> I think you have just forgotten. It was brought up at the time (I have >> a post of 7th Dec 2021 about it). > > Then I have indeed just forgotten. Unfortunately, my Deja News doesn't > cover the period in question, so I can't check, but I have no reason to > doubt you. Well, easy to forget as it's hardly matters. But this does raise a question I don't recall being asked... Do you remember why you hand-coded a character set rather than just taking it to be ASCII 33 to 126 (inclusive)? That would have made the code a bit simpler. All that occurs to me is that you might have done so to make it more fun reverse engineer. But then I can imagine you might have mixed up the order of some the more obvious runs (like A to Z to 0 to 9) to make it even more so. Good to see you back, by the way... -- Ben.