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From: smb@ulysses.UUCP (Steven Bellovin)
Newsgroups: net.crypt
Subject: Re: Beale Cypher rebuttal (long)
Message-ID: <905@ulysses.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 17-Jul-84 10:39:34 EDT
Article-I.D.: ulysses.905
Posted: Tue Jul 17 10:39:34 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 18-Jul-84 02:32:17 EDT
References: <152@oakhill.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Lines: 10


	The Gillogly strings.
		(1) If B1 and B3 were just part of a hoax, why put the strings in
		    at all?  Wouldn't it be better to make them really
		    random to keep people searching for the right key document?

As Kahn points out in "The Codebreakers", most people regard cryptanalysis
as akin to magic -- black magic.  If you can't comprehend how someone
is going to crack your cipher, there would seem little point to using random
numbers instead.  Besides, most folks aren't particularly good generators or
recognizers of random strings (see Knuth Vol 2).