Instead of encrypting data, ZOSCII encodes messages as addresses pointing to characters in a shared ROM file (any binary file - photo, song, game ROM). Non-deterministic selection from multiple matching positions creates ~10^millions possible encodings.
Security comes from combinatorial explosion, not mathematics. No encryption = no export controls, quantum-proof by design.
Looks interesting for it's simplicity and ability to thwart encryption legislation.
Just a couple of points:
- It looks this could be described as a variation on one time pad. Instead of one pad, you're using up to 256 pads.
- It appears that the size of most messages will double.
- To encode will require substantial memory to hold the address lookup table. With a 64K ROM, as much as 1 Mb would be required. This could prove challenging on a 8 bit micro.
Intuition also tells me that you could probably achieve reasonably similar security by using a simple mathematical encryption method with a comparable sized (64K) secret key.
Part of the attraction of mathematical encryption is the use of short keys to facilitate frequent key exchange.
Instead of encrypting data, ZOSCII encodes messages as addresses pointing to characters in a shared ROM file (any binary file - photo, song, game ROM). Non-deterministic selection from multiple matching positions creates ~10^millions possible encodings.
Security comes from combinatorial explosion, not mathematics. No encryption = no export controls, quantum-proof by design.
Open source, working implementation available.
Looks interesting for it's simplicity and ability to thwart encryption legislation.
Just a couple of points:
Intuition also tells me that you could probably achieve reasonably similar security by using a simple mathematical encryption method with a comparable sized (64K) secret key.Part of the attraction of mathematical encryption is the use of short keys to facilitate frequent key exchange.