• bioemerl@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    Technically you would be fine to compress the encrypted data, but encrypted data doesn’t compress well so it’s not really worth your time

    • bastian_5
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Depends on if you’re using lossless or lossy compression. Lossless compression will usually make it bigger, because it relies entirely on data being formatted so their are common patterns or elements that can be described with fewer parts. Like, an ok compression algorithm for a book written in English and stored as Unicode would be to convert it to ASCII and have a thing that will denote Unicode if there happens to be anything that can’t convert. An encrypted version of that book would look indestinguishable from random characters, so compressing it at that point would just put that Unicode denoter before every single character, making the book end up taking more space.

      • bioemerl@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        The problem is that when you compress before you encrypt, the file size becomes a source of data about the contents. If an attacker has control of part of the data - say - a query string, they can use that to repeatedly add things to your data and see how the size changes as a result.

        • bastian_5
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          So it sounds like compression before encryption should only be done in specific circumstances because it can be a security issue depending on use case, but encryption before compression should never be done because it will almost always increase the size of the file