You Are a Terrorist (OTP Addendum)

You Are a Terrorist (OTP Addendum)

The demand for my "One-time Pad" torrent was rather modest here. I guess I will have to somewhat raise your awareness of security. NSA disinformation agents will do almost anything to prevent you from using OTP (One-time Pads), because they cannot decode it.

The one-time-pad is the only cryptosystem with theoretically perfect secrecy.

The one-time-pad is one of the most practical methods of encryption where one or both parties must do all work by hand, without the aid of a computer; this made it important in the pre-computer era, and it could conceivably still be useful in situations where possession of a computer is illegal or incriminating or where trustworthy computers are not available.

One-time pads are practical in situations where two parties in a secure environment must be able to depart from one another and communicate from two separate secure environments with perfect secrecy.

The one-time-pad can be used in superencryption.

The algorithm most commonly associated with quantum cryptography is the one-time pad.

The one-time pad can be a part of an introduction to cryptography.

OTP (One-time Pad) ADDENDUM:

The important issue of key handling has been addressed in the comment section. Let's have a look at it: The basic principle of decryption when breaking a coded message consists of applying a key, and then seeing what kind of result you get, whether the result makes sense. If the information you decode has no inner semantic structure, or no words or mathematical algorithm behind it you can understand, then you never know if your guessed key is correct. This means that you cannot decode information, if that information consists of a truly random sequence of numbers. And that's exactly the type of key you need for OTP: A truly random sequence of numbers.

What you do is this: You encrypt that truly random sequence of numbers with let's say AES-256-Bit and then send that sequence to the recipient. Then the recipient will send you his OTP-encrypted message, he has encrypted with your key. His OTP message is unbreakable, since there is no algorithm behind it, and your AES-encrypted random key is almost unbreakable too, since there is nothing that can be broken, because it's random data.

And no, OTP cannot be guessed, since any guess is equally valid. Since the key is random and as long as the message, any message can be created if you don't know the key. Guessing the message is like guessing a picture on a white sheet of paper. Essentially you just send noise.

Do you need high encryption? If you're a freedom loving member of the militia, then you certainly do. Important people need important encryption. I prefer no encryption at all to encryption that cannot be relied on.

Where are the weaknesses of OTP? The only true weakness is that it's exceedingly difficult to create a truly random sequence of numbers. The other weakness is, of course, that computers cannot be trusted. There may be backdoors in the operating system, in applications, and even in the CPU itself, and the WLAN may eavesdrop on anything you do, or there may even be a secret memory compartment on your harddrive or inside your printer. Therefore truly secret data should never be touched by a computer.

That's the beauty of OTP: You don't need a computer to use it, and it's very easy to use.

Of course, a brute force attack is still possible now to break the AES key, but it is much more difficult now. It seems reasonable to look at most publicly available encryption software as being compromised. Never trust what you haven't created yourself, at least whenever and wherever possible.

The application of OTP is extremely easy:

H E L L O message
7 (H) 4 (E) 11 (L) 11 (L) 14 (O) message
+ 23 (X) 12 (M) 2 (C) 10 (K) 11 (L) key
= 30 16 13 21 25 message + key
= 4 (E) 16 (Q) 13 (N) 21 (V) 25 (Z) message + key (mod 26)
E Q N V Z ciphertext

Remember: In this time and age you can't be paranoid enough. Your government LOVES you, your government loves you as much as Hitler loved the Jews. As long as you're a mindless mind controlled robot of consumption and production, you may not be bothered by "your" government, but if you're interested in protecting the Constitution or supporting the militia, then the government will perceive you as a terrorist. "Oh, but I have nothing to hide", you say, sure, but what did the Jews in Nazi-Germany have to hide? Nothing. They were killed anyway. The question is not "what do you have to hide", but "what do you have to protect"? It's as if saying, "why should I be afraid of the Mafia, I have nothing to hide". Pretty naive, isn't it?