passphrases with more than 160 bits of entropy
leichter_jerrold at emc.com
leichter_jerrold at emc.com
Wed Mar 22 13:32:51 EST 2006
| Let me rephrase my sequence. Create a sequence of 256 consecutive
| bytes, with the first byte having the value of 0, the second byte the
| value of 1, ... and the last byte the value of 255. If you measure
| the entropy (according to Shannon) of that sequence of 256 bytes, you
| have maximum entropy.
Shannon entropy is a property of a *source*, not a particular sequence
of values. The entropy is derived from a sum of equivocations about
successive outputs.
If we read your "create a sequence...", then you've described a source -
a source with exactly one possible output. All the probabilities will
be 1 for the actual value, 0 for all other values; the equivocations are
all 0. So the resulting Shannon entropy is precisely 0.
-- Jerry
---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Cryptography Mailing List
Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo at metzdowd.com
More information about the cryptography
mailing list