"Nearly Unbreakable" Encryption Scheme Inspired By Human Biology 179
rjmarvin (3001897) writes "Researchers at the U.K.'s Lancaster University have reimagined the fundamental logic behind encryption, stumbling across a radically new way to encrypt data while creating software models to simulate how the human heart and lungs coordinate rhythms. The encryption method published in the American Physical Society journal and filed as a patent entitled 'Encoding Data Using Dynamic System Coupling,' transmits and receive multiple encrypted signals simultaneously, creating an unlimited number of possibilities for the shared encryption key and making it virtually impossible to decrypt using traditional methods. One of the researchers, Peter McClintock, called the encryption scheme 'nearly unbreakable.'
HEY SLASHDOT, THE FIRST LINK IS BROKEN (Score:5, Informative)
Hm. (Score:5, Informative)
OK, first bypass the click troll and get to the actual paper. [aps.org]
The general idea seems to be to transmit a large amount of noisy data per plaintext bit. Historically, crypto schemes which make the input much bigger are disfavored, but communications bandwidth is cheaper now and that might be OK.
The author of the paper seems to have fallen into the old trap of thinking that that analog signals have infinite amounts of data in them. He writes things like ''The encrypting key space is unbounded." and "The choice of the form of coupling functions comes from a set of functions that is not bounded." ("High-end" audio people also fall for this.) In reality, at some point you hit a noise threshold, and, anyway, down at the bottom, electrons and photons are discrite. Also, to be usable, whatever is used for the key has to be of finite size, and preferably not too big.
"No new cypher is worth looking at unless it comes from someone who has already broken a very hard one. - Friedman.
Re:Crypto hype (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, if only cryptographers knew about such novel concepts as confusion and diffusion [wikipedia.org]...
Re:Nearly Unbreakable (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, which means either they're being realistic in the sense that basically all forms of cryptography fall into this category,
Please share with us your crack of the one time pad.