Entropy

Category: Analysis

Status: Registered and callable in the CyberChef 11.3.0 compatibility inventory.

Input / output: ArrayBuffer → json

Background: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(information_theory)

What it does

Shannon Entropy, in the context of information theory, is a measure of the rate at which information is produced by a source of data. It can be used, in a broad sense, to detect whether data is likely to be structured or unstructured. 8 is the maximum, representing highly unstructured, ‘random’ data. English language text usually falls somewhere between 3.5 and 5. Properly encrypted or compressed data should have an entropy of over 7.5.

Note

Status here means the operation name is implemented and callable. It does not by itself promise byte-for-byte parity for every upstream option. See Compatibility and current status for the verified scope and known boundaries.

Arguments and options

Arguments are positional. Keep their order when using bake() or Pipeline.then().

Index	Name	UI type	PyChef default	Accepted values / format
`0`	Visualisation	`option`	`'Shannon scale'`	`'Shannon scale'`, `'Histogram (Bar)'`, `'Histogram (Line)'`, `'Curve'`, `'Image'`

Recipe template

Important

This is a call template built from the documented defaults. Replace placeholder values such as empty keys, paths, patterns, or lookup data before running it.

from pychef import bake

input_value = b"example"
args = ['Shannon scale']
result = bake(input_value, [{"op": 'Entropy', "args": args}])
print(result)

Pipeline example

from pychef import Pipeline

args = ['Shannon scale']
transform = Pipeline().then('Entropy', *args)
result = transform(b"example")

Dedicated operation module

The registered entry point lives in pychef.operations.by_operation.entropy. Direct calls receive the input value and a positional argument tuple:

from pychef.operations.by_operation.entropy import run

result = run(b"example", tuple(['Shannon scale']))

pychef.operations.by_operation.entropy.run(value, args)

Run this operation using its shared internal implementation.

Parameters:

value (str | bytes)
args (Sequence[Any])

Return type:

str | bytes