picoCTF str_xor Function Explained (XOR Cypher)

[@thienchi1147]

nice content, thank u

[@adryelgainza1686]

I have one question. What is the "return "".join([chr(ord(secret_c) ^ ord(new_key_c)) for (secret_c,new_key_c) in zip(secret,new_key)]) " doing? Is this the actual implementation of xor?

[@SanjinDedic]

Yes it is the implementation ord(secret_c )^ord(new_key_c) actually does the xor and returns an ineger value (which I keep representing in binary) the for loop simply cycles through the charcters in secret and the characters in message If I wrote that code myself in a way that is meant to be understood I would use 5 lines instead they used 2 variable for loops, list comprehensions and multiple operations all on one line

[@adryelgainza1686]

@@SanjinDedic Oh alright thank you!

[@tonyitalia7798]

Thank's you. Like this.

[@SanjinDedic]

Happy to help! I thought that this code was too complicated for an easy challenge so I made this to explain it, hopefully the XOR stuff makes a bit more sense now