Hi Folks,
It can be considerable fun and amusement trying to write cryptographic programs for the QL :
But as not many people seem to communicate on 'QL platform' hardware, do we really need them ?
On PCs you can use secure links with built-in encryption, and many QL people do indeed use emulators.
The QL scene is very much an open source affaire, so again, do we really need encryption ?
On this forum, (which is https), we can communicate via PMs anyway....
What do you all think ?
Steve.
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QL Cryptography
- vanpeebles
- Commissario Pebbli
- Posts: 2816
- Joined: Sat Nov 20, 2010 7:13 pm
- Location: North East UK
Re: QL Cryptography
Back in the early 90's when my QL was the only computer that I owned and I used microdrives, I wrote a small stream cipher that encrypted some of my work. It could only do data (i.e. no executables).
Source code included...it's very simple but decently secure. I was looking at the random number geneartor I used and have no idea where I got it from. Plus my password hash has a flaw as it only ranges 15 bits (max positive 16 bit value) and even though otherwise it's 32 bits, that hash genrating a key reduces it to 15 bits...sigh...just wasn't thinking back then how the key impacted the cipher. To fix it just make RAND_MAX 31 bits (i.e. the max positive 32 bit number) and recompile (Digital C SE).
Note there are a few other encryption programs on Dilwyn's site.
Source code included...it's very simple but decently secure. I was looking at the random number geneartor I used and have no idea where I got it from. Plus my password hash has a flaw as it only ranges 15 bits (max positive 16 bit value) and even though otherwise it's 32 bits, that hash genrating a key reduces it to 15 bits...sigh...just wasn't thinking back then how the key impacted the cipher. To fix it just make RAND_MAX 31 bits (i.e. the max positive 32 bit number) and recompile (Digital C SE).
Note there are a few other encryption programs on Dilwyn's site.
Re: QL Cryptography
I think it was Jonathan Hudson that ported over Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) to the QL. There was a time when PGP was considered a munition and had export controls. I'm sure there is now better levels of encryption, but for the QL, PGP is about as good as it gets.
Tim
Tim
Re: QL Cryptography
Oh wow, didn't know PGP was running on the QL. Does it need extra RAM and acceleration to work? PGP used to use a block cipher comparable to DES (I have been toying with implementing DES on a QL since it's a fairly simple algorithm).
Re: QL Cryptography
I think PGP probably needs extra memory. I ran it a few times many years ago. Pretty sure I had a Gold Card then. Jonathan was good at porting a number of Unix tools to the QL (and so did a few others). Probably the most impressive is Perl 4.
Tim
Tim