Show HN: Write (almost) perfect encryption in an hour

Re:Show HN: Write (almost) perfect encryption in an hour by mholt on Saturday January 24, 2015 @12:59PM (#8940335)

This post may draw up a lot of criticism, but if nothing else, kudos to the author for implementing a crypto scheme to understand how it works and for encouraging others to examine and learn.

Now, that isn't to say that we should actually use this library (as-is). You know, don't roll your own crypto for real use. With this particular algorithm, you're putting a lot of faith in the RNG, and it's easy to miss that you need a huge key (or lots of small ones).

Finally, the claim that it's "unbreakable, even in theory" (which comes from the Wikipedia article) to me seems a bit misleading -- isn't the theory usually stronger than any particular implementation? (The word "even" throws me off.)

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Re:Show HN: Write (almost) perfect encryption in an hour by dllthomas on Saturday January 24, 2015 @02:39PM (#8940702)

I think the idea is that systems with a finite unicity distance can be "unbreakable, in practice" because brute force would take too long, but in theory if you had enough ciphertext and did exhaust the keyspace you could show that only one possible key produces realistic output. When the key has as many degrees of freedom as the plaintext, every possible valid output has a possible key.

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