in reply to Reversible per-line "encryption"

A better solution, but probably not possible for you given what you've said, is to use authenicating client/server architecture. Otherwise, your encryption schema sounds reasonable. There's more than a fair share of encryption modules for perl, for example, you could use Crypt::OpenPGP which can easily encrypt and decrypt text strings. The program on the call center end should encrypt each line with the key id of the intended recipient, and then you can simply grep through the lines that start with your key, then decrypt them.

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Re: Re: Reversible per-line "encryption"
by bmcatt (Friar) on Jan 25, 2002 at 21:22 UTC
    Unfortunately, the call center is a different organization and they have their own systems. We won't be able to provide them a client/server setup (yet - maybe in the future, but that's a ways down the road).

    The tentative plan is to provide them with a script that they can run against the source file to encrypt it and then we process it on our side. That's why I'm hoping for the lightest-weight approach. I'm also puzzling around with some simple reversible ciphers that can be used to do the encoding.

[reply]

      I sympathize with your problem, to wit, getting a data feed from a third party over which you have little or no control.

      "The tentative plan is to provide them with a script that they can run against the source file to encrypt it and then we process it on our side."

      You'd be asking for trouble if your script presumed any particular version of Perl or the presence of any non-standard (i.e., don't come with Perl) modules. You'll probably have enough trouble just getting them to run a script at all.

      Good Luck!

      Update: Oops! Forgot to mention, if you're planning to use crypt, you should be on the lookout for architecture- or OS-dependencies in its output.

      dmm

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