on 3/1/01 9:25 pm, Greg Rose at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> At 03:06 PM 1/3/2001 -0500, John Young wrote:
>> Yes, the one-time pad. However, I wondered if Smith
>> was hinting at another cipher(s) not yet publicized,
>> perhaps computational -- or more exotic technology
>> such as quantum, DNA, ultra-spectral and beyond.
> 
> It always amazes me that people single out the OTP here. There are any
> number of other algorithms that are unconditionally secure. The simplest is
> Shamir's secret sharing, when you don't have enough shares.

I don't think secret sharing qualifies as a cipher.

> At Crypto a 
> couple of years ago the invited lecture gave some very general results
> about unconditionally secure ciphers... unfortunately I can't remember
> exactly who gave the lecture, but I think it might have been Oded
> Goldreich... forgive me if I'm wrong. The important result, though, was
> that you need truly random input to the algorithm in an amount equal to the
> stuff being protected, or you cannot have unconditional security.

Not so. Perfect compression with encryption works too.

>The OTP 
> is just the simplest realisation of this.
> 
> Greg.


Peter
-- 
Peter Fairbrother
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


Reply via email to