One-Time Pad From Caltech Offers Uncrackable Cryptography 192
zrbyte writes "One-time pads are the holy grail of cryptography — they are impossible to crack, even in principle. However, the ability to copy electronic code makes one-time pads vulnerable to hackers. Now engineers at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, have found a way around this to create a system of cryptography that is invulnerable to electronic attack. Their solution is based on a special kind of one-time pad that generates a random key through the complexity of its physical structure, namely shining a light through a diffusive glass plate."
Impossible? (Score:3, Insightful)
Couldn't you just steal the plate?
Re:Not too long until an iceberg attack is reveale (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope. The OTP is truly unbreakable.
The only problem with it is that you need to secretly transmit the pad to the recipient. How do you do that? With a one-time-pad...?
Got it backwards (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not too long until an iceberg attack is reveale (Score:5, Insightful)
The real key here is that there is no advantage to the device at all.
In the cryptographic protocol that the authors (all physicists) believe to be novel, but which every cryptographer is aware of:
1. The authors have a perfectly secure channel (separate from the one established in the protocol).
2. They exchange as much information over that channel as the device stores.
3. The later established channel can only use that number of bits.
For real excitement they xor together their OTPs. Sorry guys but this is called a pre-shared key and the crypto world is quite aware of it. Good luck with the window dressing getting you past the PC of a physics venue.