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AW: Students' Project seeks help

From: Markus Schaber <m.schaber_at_3s-software.com>
Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2011 09:43:43 +0200

Hi,

Von: Peter Samuelson [mailto:peter_at_p12n.org]

> [Tom Widmer]
> > Since encrypted data looks identical to random binary data, all
diffs
> > will necessarily be as large as the file being committed (or 2x the
> > size possibly: 1x to remove the old file + 1x to add the new file).
>
> Not _quite_. Block ciphers operate on fixed blocks (hence the name),
of
> typically 8 or 16 bytes. Depending on the mode, each block may be
> encrypted independently of its neighbors, one IV per block, or the IV
may
> be reset after a given number of blocks (often used for whole-disk
> encryption, for example, to avoid rewriting too many disk blocks on
> updates). Thus, if you're storing fixed-size records, such that any
> changes will not alter the offsets of your unchanged data, then the
delta
> of the encrypted data will be bounded on both sides, though still
larger
> than that of the unencrypted data.
>
> Of course, in the general case, Subversion is used for variable-length
> records (line-oriented text), and offsets of unchanged regions _do_
> change. And then, Tom is correct: the delta of the encrypted stream
will
> extend from the first change all the way to the end of the file, and
any
> storage mechanism (including a Subversion server) that does not have
> access to plaintext will not be very efficient.

Maybe even this behaviour is considered a potential information leak
(the position of the first change may already be sensitive information),
and each file is re-encrypted with a different random IV (which is
prepended to the file) on each change.

This is the safest way, but also very inefficient because diff cannot
optimize at all.

Security always has a price...

Best regards

Markus Schaber

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Received on 2011-07-27 15:59:40 CEST

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