Alice strikes back against Bob's 'reverse dictionary'

This example is unfortunately somewhat broken: the 'salt' in that case does not yield an exponential but only linear increase of the number of dictionaries.

Contrary to what the post says, it is not necessary to compute the 3,125 possible orders. Only 5 reverse dictionaries are enough, with reverse(n, w) = "the set of definitions the nth word of which is w". Then, iterate the reverse lookup following backwards the provided salt.

It makes the attack much more tractable, in particular since the length of definitions is bounded (you know how many dictionaries you need to compute).

What I like about these solutions is that they give proper discussion to implementation, not just the theory behind the encryption. It wasn't initially clear to me why salts were stored out in the open and when they were brought into the actual encryption process but this is a very clear explanation.

this series of articles has been brilliant so far! it takes a relatively obscure concept that people dont always know / understand (even surprisingly many within the hacker world) - and makes it so simple to understand! great job - I wish people with skills like yours taught at university!

I've loved these blog posts so far -- they're a great intro to cryptography and force me to think simply.

I'm excited to hear what Carla has to offer!

Surprisingly simple explanations of tricky cryptographic concepts. Thanks a lot!