On breaking a Huffman code

We examine the problem of deciphering a file that has been Huffman coded, but not otherwise encrypted. We find that a Huffman code can be surprisingly difficult to cryptanalyze. We present a detailed analysis of the situation for a three-symbol source alphabet and present some results for general fi...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on information theory 1996-05, Vol.42 (3), p.972-976
Main Authors: Gillman, D.W., Mohtashemi, M., Rivest, R.L.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Binary codes
Binary trees
Computer science
Cryptography
Data compression
Decoding
Encoding
Joining processes
Laboratories
Probability distribution
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:We examine the problem of deciphering a file that has been Huffman coded, but not otherwise encrypted. We find that a Huffman code can be surprisingly difficult to cryptanalyze. We present a detailed analysis of the situation for a three-symbol source alphabet and present some results for general finite alphabets.
ISSN:0018-9448
1557-9654
DOI:10.1109/18.490558