Quote:
Originally Posted by Smack dat
Just spent about 30 mins reading up about one time pad. Interesting, thanks.
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Anytime - I'm a walking book of "useless but interesting" information. LOL
Quote:
Originally Posted by rowan
It's still possible to crack this if the source of "randomness" is weak or buggy.
https://security-tracker.debian.org/.../CVE-2008-0166
Due to a coding bug, the random number generator was seeded with only 15 bits of data, which means that only 32767 unique streams would be output by the random number generator. If a key is generated immediately after seeding, that means there's only 32767 possible keys, which makes brute forcing easy. Normally a random number generator suitable for cryptography would use many, many more bits as a seed.
So if the random number generator for your OTP is flawed, it may be possible to crack the message. |
Everything is flawed when you screw up including encryption.
It's this reason that the One-Time-Pad tends to be still done by hand without the assistance of a computer. Real spies carry the "key" usually on an extremely small piece of paper that can be easily hidden.
(ie: During the cold war Russian spies would do things like have it placed under a toe nail)
Having done some personal research on the subject I quickly learned that any group that's honestly serious
(and worth worrying about) uses almost exclusively very low-tech methods to defeat state run intelligence groups.