RSA Labs FAQ -- Q62: How Can Data Compression be Used With Encryption?

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### Question 62. How Can Data Compression be Used With Encryption?

Data compression removes redundant character strings in a file. This means that the compressed file has a more uniform distribution of characters. In addition to providing shorter plaintext and ciphertext, which reduces the amount of time needed to encrypt, decrypt and transmit a file, the reduced redundancy in the plaintext can potentially hinder certain cryptanalytic attacks.

By contrast, compressing a file after encryption is inefficient. The ciphertext produced by a good encryption algorithm should have an almost statistically uniform distribution of characters. As a consequence, a compression algorithm should be unable to find redundant patterns in such text and there will be little, if any, data compression. In fact, if a data compression algorithm is able to significantly compress encrypted text, then this indicates a high level of redundancy in the ciphertext which, in turn, is evidence of poor encryption.