Does anyone know if I can encrypt files using Ruby?
I want to make my students’ grades available for them on-line. But this
is private information. I thought that perhaps I could have each
student’s marks in an encrypted file which can be decrypted by Ruby using
a passphrase. The passphrase would be the student’s Social Security
Number.
I suppose that a symmetric cypher would good for this, since I don’t have
to worry about transmitting the passphrase.
Thanks for the help.
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Daniel Carrera
Graduate Teaching Assistant. Math Dept.
University of Maryland. (301) 405-5137
Um... if it's private, don't put it in a publicly-viewable table, even
if it is encrypted....
Have each student create a public/private key set with gpg. Then post the
keys on a key server. You publish the grades by sending them a message
encrypted with the public key. The student decrypts it with the private
key.
That would, however, be a simply MAHVELOUS class to implement in Ruby.
Ted, long-time member of the American Cryptogram Association.
The passphrase would be the student’s Social Security
Number.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that this is in any way secure.
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Steve Coltrin spcoltri@omcl.org
ME’s get the best stuff, naturally, but find me a man who has at some
point actually urinated on a human brain, and I’ll guarantee it is a
tow-truck driver. - EMT420
I pointed out Ruby/MCrypthttp://www.rubylinks.de last week: it wraps
libmcrypt which implements a variety of symmetric ciphers. I bring it up
again now to hopefully get a few more eyes looking at a big bug the
wrapper has: in my experience, it only works properly in ECB mode.
Robert Feldt mentioned in [ruby-talk:62468] that he intends on packaging
up Ruby implementations of RSA, DSA, and ElGamal.
Brian
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Daniel Carrera (dcarrera@math.umd.edu) wrote:
Does anyone know if I can encrypt files using Ruby?
Um… if it’s private, don’t put it in a publicly-viewable table, even
if it is encrypted…
Have each student create a public/private key set with gpg. Then post the
keys on a key server. You publish the grades by sending them a message
encrypted with the public key. The student decrypts it with the private
key.
That would, however, be a simply MAHVELOUS class to implement in Ruby.
Ted, long-time member of the American Cryptogram Association.
Many professors in the college I attended went even further…in the opposite
direction.
It made the presumption that only YOU knew your SSN, so it posted grades in
plaintext. Only you knew your SSN so only you would know which of the ‘n’
grades up there was yours.
Sure, you could see everyone elses, but had no idea whos was whos.