• bastian_5@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    13
    ·
    11 months ago

    Compress the encrypted data. You’re talking about encrypting compressed data, this was talking about compressing encrypted data.

    • bioemerl@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      11 months ago

      Technically you would be fine to compress the encrypted data, but encrypted data doesn’t compress well so it’s not really worth your time

      • bastian_5@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        11 months ago

        Depends on if you’re using lossless or lossy compression. Lossless compression will usually make it bigger, because it relies entirely on data being formatted so their are common patterns or elements that can be described with fewer parts. Like, an ok compression algorithm for a book written in English and stored as Unicode would be to convert it to ASCII and have a thing that will denote Unicode if there happens to be anything that can’t convert. An encrypted version of that book would look indestinguishable from random characters, so compressing it at that point would just put that Unicode denoter before every single character, making the book end up taking more space.

        • bioemerl@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          11 months ago

          The problem is that when you compress before you encrypt, the file size becomes a source of data about the contents. If an attacker has control of part of the data - say - a query string, they can use that to repeatedly add things to your data and see how the size changes as a result.

          • bastian_5@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            11 months ago

            So it sounds like compression before encryption should only be done in specific circumstances because it can be a security issue depending on use case, but encryption before compression should never be done because it will almost always increase the size of the file