People who talk about using one-time pads in practice are generally either military or idiots.
It takes a lot of work to generate (and in many cases to communicate) a one-time pad. Any reuse of data (or use of low-entropy random number generators) ruins the entire concept entirely, resulting in something that cryptographers assure me is easily broken. The required effort is fine for the military. But very few commercial applications find it feasible. | [reply] |
resulting in something that cryptographers assure me is easily broken
Yup. When you implement an OTP with a cyclic key, it's called a Vigenere Cipher. The attack looks at letter frequencies and their distributions within the ciphertext.
thor
Feel the white light, the light within
Be your own disciple, fan the sparks of will
For all of us waiting, your kingdom will come
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I get nervous whenever anyone mentions "one-time pad". In any case, I still can't imagine this having significant savings over coookie + session ID + database.
"There is no shame in being self-taught, only in not trying to learn in the first place." -- Atrus, Myst: The Book of D'ni.
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