[liberationtech] One time pad Management system?

[Paul Elliott]

On Thu, Jul 11, 2013 at 08:27:55PM -0700, hack at riseup.net wrote:
> What is a "One Time Pad" management system? A text file?
> 
> Also, why do you want to use a OTP? There are pretty good reasons not to
> use one which a book on cryptography will be able to explain to you.
> 
> Also, I don't think this list is perhaps the best place to ask these
> questions. Perhaps try the Cryptography stack exchange.
> 

There are situations where a OTP is ideal, as any good book
on cryptography will tell you.

There are situations where people can anticipate the future
need to communicate quickly, but absolutely securely. In some
cases a high bandwidth, low latency secure communications channel
exists.

Example 1: Every government in the world can anticipate the future
need to communicate quickly with every other government.  A low
latency high bandwidth secure communications channel exits.
(Couriers). Given a secure communications channel for key exchange,
OTPs are absolutely unbreakable. There is nothing the NSA's
mathematicians can do about it. Therefore we can expect that every
government (and big corporation) uses OTPs. If they don't they are
stupid.

Example 2: most family members meet, an ideal time to exchange
OTPs.

OTPs can be thought of a way to figuratively speaking, "send your
message before you write it". In other words, you can use the low
latency secure channel in advance, to enable you to later send an
absolutely secure message quickly later over an insecure, high latency
channel like the internet.

"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes
hurtling down the highway." Tanenbaum, Andrew S.

OTPs have no public key features. OTPs are useless for impromptu
communication.  Parties using OTP must plan in advance and exchange
keys. But, given this planning and anticipation, OTPs are superior to
every other form of cryptography, because given the security of the
key exchange and the keys, they are absolutely unbreakable.

Who knows what theorems the NSA's mathematicians have proved in
secret? For all we know, RSA and DSA may be completely broken. But
the OTP is unbreakable.

-- 
Paul Elliott                               1(512)837-1096
pelliott at BlackPatchPanel.com               PMB 181, 11900 Metric Blvd Suite J
http://www.free.blackpatchpanel.com/pme/   Austin TX 78758-3117
---
"Encryption works. Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one
of the few things that you can rely on. Unfortunately, endpoint
security is so terrifically weak that NSA can frequently find ways
around it." Edward Snowden