Re: xor w/prbs

[karn@qualcomm.com (Phil Karn)]

At 10:14 PM 6/17/93, Kragen Sittler wrote:
>Some MORON wrote an article in Computer Shopper, about doing a one-time pad
>with a PRBS... in fact, he even challenged any cryptographers to break it.
>(He used a 32-bit seed for the PRBS.)

Sigh. This is starting to look like the problem that skeptic groups
like the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the
Paranormal have been facing for a long time. The basic problem is that
it's far easier to make a bogus claim than it is to carefully refute it.

In this case, it *ought* to suffice to simply point people who make
"unbreakable" but trivial ciphers at the existing volume of literature.
But they can get stubborn and insist that you actually break it, not
understanding that there's a big difference between a cipher that you
are confident that can be cracked and a cipher in which you can place your
confidence that it can't be cracked.

Plus ca la change, plus ca la meme chose.

Phil