well, yes, if you have a few months free, read Applied Cryptography, but if you can't be bothered with that just check out the pure perl Crypt::Solitaire by Ian Goldberg. the algorithm was designed by Schnier, anyway. he says:

"solitaire may be low tech, but its security is intended to be high-tech".

i found stepping thru the code fun & rewarding, anyway. no messing with xs, no cross platform problems. one proviso, text encryption only.

...wufnik

-- in the world of the mules there are no rules --

ps: adam back has some links worth checking out at

www.cypherspace.org

hope the following RSA in 2 lines of perl does not disturb you as much as me ;-)

print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*"
+,<>
)]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|
+dc`
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