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Unbreakable Cryptography in 5 Minutes

xrds.acm.org

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Re: Unbreakable Cryptography in 5 Minutes

#11

Post by Petrushka »

bpolania wrote: post #9
Petrushka wrote: post #3

Wow! Does this say that as long as key generation, key distribution, and message authentication are trivial, unbreakable cryptography is a cinch? What a shock, here I thought that all those billions of dollars of research and thousands upon thousands of man-hours devoted to the development of secure communications throughout the last three-thousand years meant that this is a difficult problem. Had all those people si…

XRDS Crossroads is a magazine blog for students, the article presents an actual topic explained for those interested, I think it targets an important part of Hacker News demography and it makes an excellent job in encouraging students to go ahead and develop their own crytographic solution, so I don't know what are you so angry about the article

I'm a student myself. Funny enough, some of us are actually intelligent and can handle complexity. To me, this is the equivalent of teaching military science by telling someone how to shoot a gun. Instead of trying to introduce someone into the field by showing them what questions the field is actually trying solve, you're introducing them into the field by showing them the small subset which those who have no interest in it assume constitutes the entirety of it.

How many mathematicians do you thing have read an article on cryptography, gotten really interested in it, and then realized the most important open question in it revolves around the computer equivalent of spotting a fake ID?

Re: Unbreakable Cryptography in 5 Minutes

#12

Post by betterunix »

Petrushka wrote: post #11
bpolania wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XRDS Crossroads is a magazine blog for students, the article presents an actual topic explained for those interested, I think it targets an important part of Hacker News demography and it makes an excellent job in encouraging students to go ahead and develop their own crytographic solution, so I don't know what are you so angry about the article

I'm a student myself. Funny enough, some of us are actually intelligent and can handle complexity. To me, this is the equivalent of teaching military science by telling someone how to shoot a gun. Instead of trying to introduce someone into the field by showing them what questions the field is actually trying solve, you're introducing them into the field by showing them the small subset which those who have no intere…

"the most important open question in it revolves around the computer equivalent of spotting a fake ID"

I am pretty sure the most important open question in cryptography is whether or not one-way functions exist...

Re: Unbreakable Cryptography in 5 Minutes

#13

Post by anuy »

This article is very poorly written. Few things: author even did not mention the common name "one-time pad" for the technique he explained. one-time pad(OTP) uses the key same length as the data. the key has to come from a true random source that is resistant to side-channel attacks. key transport/exchange is a big issue.

Diffie–Hellman key exchange uses keys shorter than message length using prime field arithmetic. DH key exchange is not really paired with OTP. So author tossing the name of DH key exchange is odd. Good intro about OTP and DH Key exchange is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffie%E2%80%93Hellman_key_exch...

Re: Unbreakable Cryptography in 5 Minutes

#14

Post by JVIDEL »

bpolania wrote: post #9
Petrushka wrote: post #3

Wow! Does this say that as long as key generation, key distribution, and message authentication are trivial, unbreakable cryptography is a cinch? What a shock, here I thought that all those billions of dollars of research and thousands upon thousands of man-hours devoted to the development of secure communications throughout the last three-thousand years meant that this is a difficult problem. Had all those people si…

XRDS Crossroads is a magazine blog for students, the article presents an actual topic explained for those interested, I think it targets an important part of Hacker News demography and it makes an excellent job in encouraging students to go ahead and develop their own crytographic solution, so I don't know what are you so angry about the article

I agree partially and really this wouldn't be a bad article at all if it wasn't for the link-bait title they used.

Re: Unbreakable Cryptography in 5 Minutes

#15

Post by rubbingalcohol »

anuy wrote: post #13

This article is very poorly written. Few things: author even did not mention the common name "one-time pad" for the technique he explained. one-time pad(OTP) uses the key same length as the data. the key has to come from a true random source that is resistant to side-channel attacks. key transport/exchange is a big issue. Diffie–Hellman key exchange uses keys shorter than message length using prime field arithmetic.…

A requirement for a One Time Pad is that the key stream be generated from true random numbers. Computerized number generators are pseudorandom number generators. Even cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generators are not true random numbers.

This article describes some of the requirements for a One Time Pad, but its failure to account for the strict requirements of the definition leave us with something that is not provably "unbreakable."

Re: Unbreakable Cryptography in 5 Minutes

#16

Post by bpolania »

Petrushka wrote: post #11
bpolania wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XRDS Crossroads is a magazine blog for students, the article presents an actual topic explained for those interested, I think it targets an important part of Hacker News demography and it makes an excellent job in encouraging students to go ahead and develop their own crytographic solution, so I don't know what are you so angry about the article

I'm a student myself. Funny enough, some of us are actually intelligent and can handle complexity. To me, this is the equivalent of teaching military science by telling someone how to shoot a gun. Instead of trying to introduce someone into the field by showing them what questions the field is actually trying solve, you're introducing them into the field by showing them the small subset which those who have no intere…

The article explains an implementation of a Vernam Cipher, it's not intended to solve the most important questions in cryptography.

I don't understand how "introduce someone into the field by showing them what questions the field is actually trying solve" could do any good, it's like saying that the first subject in Physics 101 should be the unified field theory instead of Newtonian physics.

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