[thelist] cryptic question

[Eduardo Dominguez]

   We are designing a little game for our employees. In this
game, if you guess the price of an item, you win that item.

   One guess per employee per day.

   The price of the item is stored in a DB. A DB a lot
of people have access to. This number should be crypted,
but then, its an encrypted number. Brute forcing your
way to the number should be VERY simple. A simple for()
loop testing all the numbers between 0 and 1000 and you
are all set.

   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 ?

   My only guess is enforcing this number thru unix permissions,
but then, the number in its encrypted form has to be read at least
once to be compared. You can write down this number and test.

   How can we solve this ?


_________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com