Re:Leaping Brain's "Virtually Uncrackable" DRM is just an XO...
by dagw on Tuesday November 27, 2012 @08:03AM
(#4836928)
Perfect security is theoretically possible, what gets in the way is human error
I forget where I read the story (might have been Cryptonomicon), and I don't know if it's true, but I find it quite illustrative of the point.
During WWII the British where finding that some of their messages encrypted with one time pads where being cracked by the Germans. Since they where pretty sure that was mathematically impossible they where quite shocked and immediately launched a full investigation.
Eventually they found that the problem was the team generating the one time pads (basically a room full of people drawing bingo balls with letters on them at random) had started second-guessing the randomness of letters generated. They'd started to subconsciously avoid balls that would lead to what they thought where patterns in an attempt to make the otp more random. Of course this lead to less randomness and broke the security of the otp.
I forget where I read the story (might have been Cryptonomicon), and I don't know if it's true, but I find it quite illustrative of the point.
During WWII the British where finding that some of their messages encrypted with one time pads where being cracked by the Germans. Since they where pretty sure that was mathematically impossible they where quite shocked and immediately launched a full investigation.
Eventually they found that the problem was the team generating the one time pads (basically a room full of people drawing bingo balls with letters on them at random) had started second-guessing the randomness of letters generated. They'd started to subconsciously avoid balls that would lead to what they thought where patterns in an attempt to make the otp more random. Of course this lead to less randomness and broke the security of the otp.