The two-time pad: midwife of information theory?

Re:The two-time pad: midwife of information theory? by gruez on Wednesday July 18, 2018 @02:26PM (#17560867)

> [Against clear orders] The printers decided to print four copies of each pad then send two each to the KGB and GRU. Neither the KGB nor the GRU reused the pads they received, except perhaps because of occasional operator error.

why? how much more expensive could it be to generate new random numbers? do they not have cheap/fast RNGs?

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Re:The two-time pad: midwife of information theory? by pdpi on Wednesday July 18, 2018 @03:15PM (#17561274)

In the 40s? Probably not, no. This was a relevant and useful book when it was published — https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Million_Random_Digits_with...

Generating randomness is hard, and a recent concern.

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Re:The two-time pad: midwife of information theory? by kragen on Thursday July 19, 2018 @08:06PM (#17571440)

One of the useful things about that book was that using it provided evidence that you didn't choose your "random" numbers through some tricky process designed to produce a certain nonrandom result.

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Re:The two-time pad: midwife of information theory? by ballenf on Wednesday July 18, 2018 @02:34PM (#17560937)

He doesn't answer the 'why' but there's an implication that the printing shop had orders to produce X number of one time pads and it was half the work to setup the apparatus this way. Basically it was a shortcut that presumably felt entirely reasonable to folks running the printing press. And maybe even technically compliant with their instructions depending on the wording thereof.

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Re:The two-time pad: midwife of information theory? by qop on Wednesday July 18, 2018 @02:56PM (#17561105)

Lazy press operators. Maybe they thought they were doing someone a favor by shortcutting.

Just a guess, obv I wasn't there.

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