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copied!<p>Will the client require the distribution of obfuscated consecutive order numbers to look like anything in particular?</p> <p>If you do not want to complicate yourself with encryption, use a combination of bit shuffling with a bit of random salting (if you have bits/digits to spare) XOR-superimposed over some fixed constant (or some function of something that would be readily available alongside the obfuscated order ID at any time, such as perhaps the <code>customer_id</code> who placed the order?)</p> <hr> <p><strong>EDIT</strong></p> <p>It appears that all the client desires is for an outside party to not be able to infer the progress of sales. In this case a shuffling solution (bit-mapping, e.g. original bit 1 maps to obfuscated bit 6, original bit 6 maps to obfuscated bit 3, etc.) should be more than sufficient. Add some random bits if you really want to make it harder to crack, provided that you have the additional bits available (e.g. assuming original order numbers go only up to 6 digits, but you're allowed 8-9 in the obfuscated order number, then you can use 2-3 digits for randomness before performing bit-mapping). Possibly XOR the result for additional intimidation (an inquisitive party might attempt to generate two consecutive obfuscated orders, XOR them against each other to get rid of the XOR constant, and would then have to deduce which of the non-zero bits come from the salt, and which ones came from an increment, and whether he really got two consecutive order numbers or not... He would have to repeat this for a significant number of what he'd hope are consecutive order numbers in order to crack it.)</p> <hr> <p><strong>EDIT2</strong></p> <p>You can, of course, allocate completely random numbers for the obfuscated order IDs, store the correspondence to persistent storage (e.g. DB) and perform collision detection as well as de-obfuscation against same storage. A bit of overkill if you ask me, but on the plus side it's the best as far as obfuscation goes (and you implement whichever distribution function your soul desires, <em>and</em> you can change the distribution function anytime you like.)</p>

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