Re: A Snake-Oil FAQ

[Simon Spero <ses@tipper.oit.unc.edu>]

On Sun, 21 Jul 1996, David Sternlight wrote:
> 
> It's not a "monkeys in the British Museum" problem, since when you hit the
> right key sequences both encrypted text streams will fall cleanly
> out--otherwise the chances are overwhelming (given a decently long run)
> that one of the two streams will contain garbles or more likely be complete
> gibberish.

Not with one-time-pads... the key is as long as the plaintext. Our Hamlet 
writing monkeys will produce, amongst others, numerous versions of the 
play where the prince's name is telmaH. As well as vastly more where the 
monkeys get all the way to the last sentence and then 

One-Time-Pads offer perfect security as long as they're only used once. If
they're used more than once, they're not one-time-pads. 

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