Re: What an interesting idea. A key that will turn the encrypted file into a of anything
What an interesting idea. A key that will turn the encrypted file into a of anything
as long as it's the same size.
Sounds like an intriguing research project, but I sense the phrase "combinatoric explosion" looms large.
So not only "Give me six lines from an honest man, and I can find something with which to hang him" but now
"Give my a picture of your pet kitten and I can turn it into something much nastier"
As there appears to be no restriction on the size of the key, a template that is the same size as the file and simply XORed with the file to give the different image required will give you what you need.
If you want to get a teensy bit more sophisticated, compress the 'key' with a decent compressor, possibly LZW, LZMA, or one of the BWT variants, and if you want to get over the top in academic point-scoring, determine by algorithmic means* the Kolmogorov complexity of the 'key template' and use that as the key.
AES, as an encryption method, is specifically designed to make it difficult to determine the key, even if you have both the plaintext and the encrypted text (look for 'Known-plaintext attack'), which is why, as you say, generating a target transformed image from a base image using AES would be computationally difficult.
*this is a joke.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
