Hi all,

I read a couple of days ago about Unicode
PUA (Private Use Area) code points and thought
why not have a little Go program and an extra
..ttf font, so that people can base64 encode their
messages prior running my pua.go program.

If you like to design your own .ttf font, consider
to start at a different code point address, in the
source code, so that not all people use the same
starting point and .ttf font.

I wonder, why this was, to my knowledge, never a
topic in privacy/anonymity circles ...

Maybe the majority of people, in anon/privacy circles,
use 7-bit US-ASCII, instead of UTF-8, I don't know.

https://github.com/stefanclaas/pua

P.S. do not forget to add these headers, once you have
a base64/pua encoded message:

MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

Regards
Stefan
--
----Ed25519 Signature----
f08661e7719ef6f22aa3b18769f518201a4f797f9a30446884bc0692af4e8970
141fdd51e7f310537f547a638b29c6b55b0956417846fccaa0e6b63a9195d80e

On 3/9/24 06:52, Stefan Claas wrote:
> I wonder, why this was, to my knowledge, never a
> topic in privacy/anonymity circles ...

I suspect because it probably amounts to a substitution cipher.
Frequency analysis will probably give it away in little time.

--
Grant. . . .

Grant Taylor wrote:

> On 3/9/24 06:52, Stefan Claas wrote:
> > I wonder, why this was, to my knowledge, never a
> > topic in privacy/anonymity circles ...
>
> I suspect because it probably amounts to a substitution cipher.
> Frequency analysis will probably give it away in little time.

You are right. The program uses, so to speak, a substitution table,
by mapping the base64 alphabet to a different location.

The program is not meant as an encryption tool, only for encoding /
decoding base64 content. It should simply make content reading a bit
harder for mail filters.

Regards
Stefan
--
----Ed25519 Signature----
7e9416eeb31cab76fa255e9231b9ce1d16c762a538a36cb5662ff23bf26ba30d
0183ffcb05d47503e2b51ef17887ca6cce8b0243bcf3ef141f9612441ff32d06

On 3/10/24 04:23, Stefan Claas wrote:
> The program is not meant as an encryption tool, only for encoding /
> decoding base64 content. It should simply make content reading a bit
> harder for mail filters.

Okay....

I think that you're going to end up with double encoding or non-7-bit
characters.

I don't feel like this will gain much and will make things more
complicated. Sort of like JavaScript or Perl minification.

IMHO the question is not /if/ it can be done, but /should/ it be done.

--
Grant. . . .

Grant Taylor wrote:

> On 3/10/24 04:23, Stefan Claas wrote:
> > The program is not meant as an encryption tool, only for encoding /
> > decoding base64 content. It should simply make content reading a
> > bit harder for mail filters.
>
> Okay....
>
> I think that you're going to end up with double encoding or non-7-bit
> characters.

Well, yes. The program currently handles only the base64 alphabet. I
think this is sufficient, but people are free to change that. Like you
would use PGP, encrypt without an armor and use my solution, thus hiding
the content, for mail filters.

> I don't feel like this will gain much and will make things more
> complicated. Sort of like JavaScript or Perl minification.

At least it will make content non-readable until third parties would
adapt this technique, which I doubt in most cases.

> IMHO the question is not /if/ it can be done, but /should/ it be done.

The tool is more or less for fun, but maybe useful for some people.

Here is a small message, which should render blank squares etc.,
in a terminal, Newsreader or WWW Browser:

󰀒󰀆󰀕󰀬󰀛󰀆󰀼󰀠󰀘󰀒󰀹󰀰󰀋󰀦󰀄󰀭󰀜󰀲󰀁󰀣
󰀛󰀶󰀵󰀭󰀝󰀖󰀹󰀩󰀝󰀇󰀤󰀮󰀈󰀄󰀡󰀡󰀝󰀦󰀔󰀠
󰀘󰀒󰀁󰀮󰀚󰀖󰀍󰀥󰀈󰀅󰀍󰀵󰀛󰀦󰀑󰀡󰀞󰀒󰀄󰁀

When used with my program and the .ttf font is becomes readable.
The font does not need to be installed.

Regards
Stefan

Stefan Claas wrote:

> Grant Taylor wrote:
>
> > On 3/10/24 04:23, Stefan Claas wrote:
> > > The program is not meant as an encryption tool, only for encoding
> > > / decoding base64 content. It should simply make content reading a
> > > bit harder for mail filters.
> >
> > Okay....
> >
> > I think that you're going to end up with double encoding or
> > non-7-bit characters.
>
> Well, yes. The program currently handles only the base64 alphabet. I
> think this is sufficient, but people are free to change that. Like you
> would use PGP, encrypt without an armor and use my solution, thus
> hiding the content, for mail filters.

Added pua+ to my repositories.

https://github.com/stefanclaas/pua-plus

--
Regards
Stefan