[thelist] cryptic question

Ben Henick persist1_pdx at yahoo.com
Tue Oct 3 02:11:19 CDT 2000


>    The price of the item is stored in a DB. A DB a lot
> of people have access to. This number should be crypted,
>
>    Is there a way to keep this number COMPLETELY private
> so that only the guy that posted it knows it ? Or even
> better, a number that NO ONE knows ?

Um, do the brute force yourself.  Since all the database is doing is
storing numbers in tables, which then get ABSed against a target, why
don't you have it compare guesses to a RANGE of numbers (which
presumably would not change from contest to contest)?

With an appropriately written interface, the admin could then pull the
comparisons with the appropriate number, and voila!  No encryption
necessary.  Nor would anybody be likely to know the answer in
advance... and everybody would have to go back to using common sense.

I grant that it is, in effect, a bubble sort - but it also allows
secrets to stay secret.  This latter is the actual goal...



=====
Ben Henick              |  "In the long run, men hit only
Web Author At-Large     |  what they aim at.  Therefore,
www.io.com/persist1/    |  though they should fail
persist1 at io.com         |  immediately, they had better aim
persist1_pdx at yahoo.com  |  high."  --Henry David Thoreau

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