News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Open Letter from Governments to Facebook Is an All-Out Attack on Encryption. Parent comment

Re:Open Letter from Governments to Facebook Is an All-Out At... by mantap on Monday October 07, 2019 @04:38AM (#21178658)
One time pads just push the problem to the random number generator (which has to be 100% perfect, free from correlations and bias). How exactly does one prove that their hardware RNG is uncorreleated? e.g. what you thought was RF noise could actually contain the theme tune to Barney the dinosaur. The most provable way we have to generate random numbers of the quality necessary is to generate them using... cryptographic ciphers.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Open Letter from Governments to Facebook Is an All-Out At... by bouncycastle on Tuesday October 08, 2019 @10:24AM (#21192635)
Hardware random number generators poof of correctness comes from... physics.

Unless there is some fundamental hole in our understanding of physics, including thermodynamics and quantum mechanics, HRNG are the best source.

Using cryptographic ciphers for pseudorandom functions can be catastrophic, as seeding them correctly is a problem. (You still need some entropy from outside for seeding)

Of course, using one time pads is not really practical either.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Open Letter from Governments to Facebook Is an All-Out At... by shadowprofile77 on Monday October 07, 2019 @03:00PM (#21184659)
What about collecting cosmic background radiation and converting it to one-time pad bits?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Open Letter from Governments to Facebook Is an All-Out At... by dark_glass on Monday October 07, 2019 @11:24AM (#21181938)
Why not roll physical dice?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Open Letter from Governments to Facebook Is an All-Out At... by diffeomorphism on Monday October 07, 2019 @11:39AM (#21182133)
How many dice would you have to roll for sending this message? How long would that take?
[ Parent | on HN ]