A Modern Reappraisal of the One-Time Pad Cipher.
in [Cryptography]
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From: adacrypt on 2 May 2010 03:15 I have recently written (in recent years that is) two adaptations of the Vigenere Cipher that have the well known caveat that 1) the key is random and 2) the key length is equal to the message length and the key is used only once in the course of encrypting a message. These are not pads in terms of what Major Joseph Mauborgne co-invented in or around 1920 and it would be scientifically retrogressive to rate them as such. They are presented as fresh adaptations of the Vigenere Cipher that have been made possible only, by modern computer science. These ciphers satisfy the criteria for theoretically unbreakable class according to the industry standards. The historic OTP is also an adaptation of the same Vigenere Cipher but a rather weak one that was remarkable in its time but is only worth remembering now for having been the first of many yet to come. The most salient thing about the OTP is that Major Mauborgne based the design of the OTP on the uncertainty that is induced in ciphertext by using randomness in cryptography for the first time. This was ground breaking new cryptography that had huge ramifications. The OTP has been quoted in crypto textbooks as the paradox of the century in being unbreakable but unworkable and it was always timed in the writers presentations to coincide with some journalistic romance and frustration that was meant to be amusing to readers. It has had its day now however and has been superseded by at least two look-alike but intrinsically quite different ciphers with the possibility of many more to come from other readers in this newsgroup. Continuing to present it today even as an abstract discussion model is an embarrassing anachronism and indeed it is becoming ragged and hackneyed it is time to call it a day now, forget it and instead to gracefully remember Joseph Mauborgne for his realisation and instigation of the randomness that was debuted in the OTP in 1920 and which is fundamental to all cryptography today. It is RIP to the OTP now in my view. I am a keen admirer of Major Joseph Mauborgne who was Head of Crptographic Research for the US Army in his day, criticisng the OTP here against a modern background is not criticisng him. It is time to get real and get honest the OPT was not generally recognised over the years as being an adaptation of the Vigenere cipher, nor as a stepping stone to better ciphers, nor as the inception of randomness in the science of cryptography and instead was given a short-sighted curio value that writers saw as amusing for its freaky image value only. I say put the matter right now as a service to the OTP, to cryptography and to Major Joe Comment. The OTP was the unrecognised precursor in what should have been a revival of the Vigenere Cipher. It was Major Joseph Mauborgnes answer to the lexical style attack that Kasiski and Babbage used to break this famously strong cipher in its day. His vision of randomness in this direction has been largely unrecognised by the cryptographers of today and good new cryptography has been lost as the result. Introducing randomness would foil the linguistic probability that all languages possess naturally. With hindsight it was not an end in itself but by means of randomness it should have been recognised as the renaissance of this old and very powerful cipher type overcoming its earlier defects the launch rocket that computer science would use to re-introduce new Vigenere ciphers that are demonstrably, very viable to day. Instead of that it was foolishly neglected and is seen as a totally failed end a cul de sac attempt that had nothing more than curio value in cryptography. It has become a hobby-horse for a few very small-minded people today who lack the design capability to think any original thoughts and instead carry on chanting the same old hackneyed, blinkered dogma of ignorance and decadence. They drag up the one-time pad in completely out of context and irrelevant backdrop arguments to try and stifle progress that they cannot understand because of their limitations and will not accept that cryptography has moved on from there and is on the verge now of vast changes. This is a damaging cult in cryptography. It needs to stop now. - adacrypt
From: Bruce Stephens on 2 May 2010 13:08 adacrypt <austin.obyrne(a)hotmail.com> writes: > [...] and will not accept that cryptography has moved on from there > and is on the verge now of vast changes. This is a damaging cult in > cryptography. It needs to stop now. - adacrypt When all's said and done, you're still talking about a symmetric cipher. (Critical readers (which seems to be everybody) would argue that it's a more or less useless symmetric cipher.) The *real* revolution surely started in 1976 (a little earlier in secret in GCHQ). See "New Directions in Cryptography", W. Diffie and M. E. Hellman, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. IT-22, Nov. 1976, pp: 644–654, and "The First Ten Years of Public-Key Cryptography Whitfield Diffie", Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 76, no. 5, May 1988, pp: 560–577.
From: Andrew Swallow on 2 May 2010 19:38 On 02/05/2010 18:08, Bruce Stephens wrote: {snip} > > When all's said and done, you're still talking about a symmetric cipher. > (Critical readers (which seems to be everybody) would argue that it's a > more or less useless symmetric cipher.) Computer disks with lots of storage and flash disks mean that the OTP is probably now viable for email, telegraph and digital voice messages. Video files may be too big. Andrew Swallow
From: Tom St Denis on 2 May 2010 20:38 On May 2, 7:38 pm, Andrew Swallow <am.swal...(a)btopenworld.com> wrote: > On 02/05/2010 18:08, Bruce Stephens wrote: > {snip} > > > > > When all's said and done, you're still talking about a symmetric cipher.. > > (Critical readers (which seems to be everybody) would argue that it's a > > more or less useless symmetric cipher.) > > Computer disks with lots of storage and flash disks mean that the OTP > is probably now viable for email, telegraph and digital voice messages. > Video files may be too big. > > Andrew Swallow Once they address that pesky key distribution problem.... Tom
From: Maaartin on 2 May 2010 21:44
On May 3, 2:38 am, Tom St Denis <t...(a)iahu.ca> wrote: > Once they address that pesky key distribution problem.... It depends. I send to a customer quite a lot of encrypted emails, but altogether they make maybe one GB per year. I could have gone there five years ago and have personally brought them a DVD, and we could be using OTP for the whole time. But we're using PGP and I know it's far more secure than my workplace or their computers, etc. |