One-Time Pads an Overall Lose for Cypherpunks

[tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)]

Cypherdenizens,

There's always a lot of speculation about one-time pads, schemes for
rewritable CDs and CD-ROMs, etc. Stuff about how to generate
sufficiently random bits to fill the CD or DAT, how to distribute the
media securely (and isn't that always where the rubber meets the
road?), and so on.

I don't wish to quash this enthusiasm, but one-time pads are an
overall "lose" for the Cypherpunks cause. In fact, the whole modern
era of crypto came about with the invention by Diffie and Hellman of
assymmetric, or public-key crypto.

A return to "secret codes" and symmetric cyphers--except as used
inside the guts of public key systems, of course, as with DES or
IDEA--is a return to the old days where the economics of transporting
and securing key material left crypto in a limited number of niches.

The "key distribution" problem is of course the killer. Even if
rewritable CDs come down in price (machines are currently a few K,
blank disks are at least $25 apiece....more than I plan to pay!), who
wants to have, say, a hundred or more disks to communicate with the
hundred or more e-mail recipients one might reasonably have (these
numbers are not central)?

And I'll trust a public key cypher with a key disk (or Newton-like
PDA) and a memorized passphrase a lot more than I'll trust a stack of
CD-ROMs which I can't reasonably carry with me at all times.

All in all, a lose. The "Crypto Phase Change" (tm) won't happen
because we convince ordinary folks to start burning one-time pads into
CDs and CD-ROMs. Face it.

Sorry to sound grumpy about this, but the advocates of one-time pads
need to do some strategic thinking about this issue.


--Tim May

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Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
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