At 03:06 PM 1/3/2001 -0500, John Young wrote:
>Yes, the one-time pad. However, I wondered if Smith
>was hinting at another cipher(s) not yet publicized,
>perhaps computational -- or more exotic technology
>such as quantum, DNA, ultra-spectral and beyond.
It always amazes me that people single out the OTP here. There are any
number of other algorithms that are unconditionally secure. The simplest is
Shamir's secret sharing, when you don't have enough shares. At Crypto a
couple of years ago the invited lecture gave some very general results
about unconditionally secure ciphers... unfortunately I can't remember
exactly who gave the lecture, but I think it might have been Oded
Goldreich... forgive me if I'm wrong. The important result, though, was
that you need truly random input to the algorithm in an amount equal to the
stuff being protected, or you cannot have unconditional security. The OTP
is just the simplest realisation of this.
Greg.
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