Re: [vile] Some questions about the -k/-K options and encryption

[Thomas Dickey]

On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 07:36:27PM +0000, Chris Green wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 08:28:43AM -0500, Paul Fox wrote:
> > chris wrote:
> >  > On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 06:39:34PM -0500, Thomas Dickey wrote:
> >  > > On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 10:02:11PM +0000, Chris Green wrote:
> >  > > > I am trying to make a few things slightly more secure on my system.  
> > 
> > i'm sure you know this, but just in case...  if you're looking to do
> > anything more simple obfuscation of your content, you should be using
> > something much stronger than crypt.  gpg is a much better bet.  i
> > haven't used vile's gnugpg.rc macros in many years, but i assume
> > they're still functional/viable.
> > 
> Yes, I know its encryption isn't very strong but on the other hand I
> think the way I'm using it makes it very unlikely to get broken.
> 
> Given a file and the knowledge that it might be encrypted with crypt()
> what methods of attack are there?  It's not like a password where you
> can brute force it by guessing lots of passwords until the result
> matches the password file (well shadow file) entry.

It's not really that hard.  I came across a curses-based program in the 1990s
which let one work through the password (I might even have a copy, but don't
recall its name :-)

-- 
Thomas E. Dickey <address@hidden>
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net

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