How is this solved in modern cryptography?
Modern cryptography solves this by using randomness (IVs, nonces, padding, salts) so that even identical plaintexts encrypt to different ciphertexts, eliminating predictable patterns.
“This telegram must be closely paraphrased before being communicated to anyone”
101–110 of 144 posts
Re: “This telegram must be closely paraphrased before being communicated to anyone”
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
An interesting quirk in Ethereum is that a contract address is determined by deployer address + nonce. So, you can send ETH to a contract that does not exist, then later deploy a contract there and recover it.
It is also the same address on many forks of Ethereum, which has led to some strange circumstances when Optimism sent tens of millions of dollars to a smart contract address on the wrong blockchain, and a hacker was able to create a smart contract they controlled using the same address on the blockchain it was accidentally sent to and steal the funds.
Do you have a link to read more about this?
Re: “This telegram must be closely paraphrased before being communicated to anyone”
#103I forget who told me this story, but at some point the British tried a crazy known-plaintext attack by planting handwritten notes in dead German soldiers’ pockets that contained an “important message” to be sent, and then in the following days they would attempt to decrypt enigma communications against the known plaintext.
Re: “This telegram must be closely paraphrased before being communicated to anyone”
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is also the same address on many forks of Ethereum, which has led to some strange circumstances when Optimism sent tens of millions of dollars to a smart contract address on the wrong blockchain, and a hacker was able to create a smart contract they controlled using the same address on the blockchain it was accidentally sent to and steal the funds.
Do you have a link to read more about this?
https://gov.optimism.io/t/message-to-optimism-community-from...
I've never seen a corporate announcement whipsaw from technical incident report to tentative job offer to a threat paraphrasing the IRA before but I guess that's because I don't spend time in the cryptoasset community.
Re: “This telegram must be closely paraphrased before being communicated to anyone”
#105Interesting. I liked the explanations in the accepted answer. This rule especially,“Never repeat in the clear the identical text of a message once sent in cryptographic form, or repeat in cryptographic form the text of a message once sent in the clear.” As a child I learned about codes from a library book. Fascinated with one-time pads, I convinced a friend to try a correspondence. We exchanged a few messages, and th…
Do you remember the book? I remember loving Alvin's Secret Code, which was on the bookshelf in my fourth-grade classroom where I sat in the back to be near the bookshelf...
Sorry, no. But it would have been a 70s or 80s publication. I recall there were several Cold War code stories, so it might have been on this subject. Like popular history stories, one after the other—you thought that was crazy? Check out this hollow nickel! But all very serious like.
Re: “This telegram must be closely paraphrased before being communicated to anyone”
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Might be unrelated in this example, but when a message is written in a lazy ROT13-like cypher, the letter e becomes a notorious rat that allows anyone to break the entire thing in very little time. Randomizing/obfuscating the letter case might buy you a little time, though I think it's something else entirely here.
Zvtug oR haeRyngRq va guvf RknzcyR, ohg juRa n zRffntR vf jevggRa va n ynml EBG13-yvxR plcuRe, guR yRggRe R oRpbzRf n abgbevbhf eng gung nyybjf nalbaR gb oeRnx guR RagveR guvat va iRel yvggyR gvzR. Enaqbzvmvat/boshfpngvat guR yRggRe pnfR zvtug ohl lbh n yvggyR gvzR, gubhtu V guvax vg'f fbzRguvat RyfR RagveRyl uReR.
ChatGPT was able to decrypt this in about 12 seconds with no context, which I found interesting.
Re: “This telegram must be closely paraphrased before being communicated to anyone”
#107I forget who told me this story, but at some point the British tried a crazy known-plaintext attack by planting handwritten notes in dead German soldiers’ pockets that contained an “important message” to be sent, and then in the following days they would attempt to decrypt enigma communications against the known plaintext.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mincemeat
The story of the man[1] whose body was used to fool German intelligence during Operation Mincemeat is quite tragic:
> Michael was born in Aberbargoed in Monmouthshire in South Wales. Before leaving the town, he held part-time jobs as a gardener and labourer. His father Thomas, a coal miner, killed himself when Michael was 15, and his mother died when he was 31. Homeless, friendless, depressed, and with no money, Michael drifted to London where he lived on the streets.
> Michael was found in an abandoned warehouse close to King's Cross, seriously ill from ingesting rat poison that contained phosphorus. Two days later, he died at age 36 in St Pancras Hospital. His death may have been suicide, although he might have simply been hungry, as the poison he ingested was a paste smeared on bread crusts to attract rats.
> After being ingested, phosphide reacts with hydrochloric acid in the stomach, generating phosphine, a highly toxic gas. One of the symptoms of phosphine poisoning is pulmonary oedema, an accumulation of large amounts of liquid in the lungs, which would satisfy the need for a body that appeared to have died by drowning. Purchase explained, "This dose was not sufficient to kill him outright, and its only effect was to so impair the functioning of the liver that he died a little time afterwards". When Purchase obtained Michael's body, it was identified as being in suitable condition for a man who would appear to have floated ashore several days after having died at sea by hypothermia and drowning.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Martin_(Royal_Marines_...
Re: “This telegram must be closely paraphrased before being communicated to anyone”
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
As I point out now and then, Colossus was not a computer. It was a key-tester, like a Bitcoin miner. Here's the block diagram of Colossus.[1] Before there were general-purpose stored program digital computers, there were many special-purpose computing devices. They checked some, but not all, of those boxes. - IBM had electronic arithmetic in test before WWII, but that went on hold during the war. Mechanical arithmeti…
"Colossus was not a computer. It was a key-tester," The original definition of computer was basically a person wot computes (analyzes data and performs arithmetic and so on). That would have mostly involved pencil and paper, fag packets and napkins. IT co-opted the term for their devices, many years later. What is your issue with Colossus performing automated computations/analysis given some inputs of some sort and h…
I think the gp was confused with other devices. Colossus was indeed a computer by most definitions. I think the poster winced it up with the Bombe or other systems - not surprising because colossus wasn’t really known for many years. (It was secret into the 1970s iirc)
Other devices would calculate but not store instructions. The common ones you see are the fire directors on naval ships, which were analog “computers”, but single purpose.
Re: “This telegram must be closely paraphrased before being communicated to anyone”
#109I forget who told me this story, but at some point the British tried a crazy known-plaintext attack by planting handwritten notes in dead German soldiers’ pockets that contained an “important message” to be sent, and then in the following days they would attempt to decrypt enigma communications against the known plaintext.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mincemeat
> Part of the wider Operation Barclay, Mincemeat was based on the 1939 Trout memo, written by Rear Admiral John Godfrey, the director of the Naval Intelligence Division, and his personal assistant, Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming
Wonder if we'll ever see it on a bond movie.
Re: “This telegram must be closely paraphrased before being communicated to anyone”
#110Well, that's one way to make it CPA-secure