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The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Thu May 27 1999 - 23:44:20
Sunder (sunder@brainlink.com)
Mon, 05 Apr 1999 15:51:47 -0400
Get a clue. As long as you have to "generate" random bytes, it's a not a one
time pad. If you don't use real world events (i.e. diode noise, nuclear
particle interference, etc.) it's not random. It's another >PSEUDO< random
number generator - useful for shareware Black Jack and Poker games, not for
cryptography.
Regardless of your rhetoric, it doesn't matter what new technologies emerged
in the 80 years that have passed. If you generate your numbers from an
algorithm, they're not truly random, they're not a one time pad.
If your code relies on two machines generating the same stream of numbers,
then those numbers aren't random, neither are they a one time pad. The
algorithm is a symmetric key cypher.
Whether or not it is a good cypher is a good question that remains unanswered
until your company posts code or algorithm for analysis.
Unless you've the marketing power equivalent to Microsoft, I wouldn't count PK
and other block or stream cyphers being driven to "niche" areas. There's
something to be said about not counting one's chickens before they hatch.
It doesn't matter how much RAM or CPU you put behind ROT13. It still doesn't
buy it any security except maybe from toddlers. Within 20 or thirty years,
unless someone finds an efficient factoring method, the only thing that will
happen to PK cyphers is that they may increase in key size by a bit.
Alex Alten wrote:
>
> At 09:13 AM 4/2/99 -0600, Bruce Schneier wrote:
> >
> >You are free to consider it to be what you like, but you have to understand
> >that you will continue to be ridiculed in the community. RC4 is an OFB
> >stream cipher. So is whatever-it-is that you use.
> >
>
> You are right, we have been ridiculed in the community. Your news letter
> and web site have been prominent in stating that it is "snake oil". And,
> as a fact, our early implementation efforts have had less strength than we
> had originally estimated. However it is a fundamental cipher, and if we
> fail to come up with a way to generate and manage the random pad bytes
> properly, then someone else will. In the 80 years since Gilbert Vernam
> invented it a lot has happened. The broad technology trends are acres of
> memory, lots of cheap microprocessors, and a sea of network availability
> and bandwidth. Together these make a practical, efficient implementation
> of it possible. Within 20 or 30 years it will probably dominate products
> using cryptography, pushing PK and block ciphers into niche areas.
>
> - Alex
>
> --
>
> Alex Alten
>
> Alten@Home.Com
> Alten@TriStrata.Com
>
> P.O. Box 11406
> Pleasanton, CA 94588 USA
> (925) 417-0159
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The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Thu May 27 1999 - 23:44:20