// COMPLETE THREAD

Re: Computerized OTP (was 5th AMENDMENT & DECRYPTION)

2 expanded posts ยท every known parent and child

NODE fd7c0690Re: Computerized OTP (was 5th AMENDMENT & DECRYPTION)
thug@phantom.com (Murdering Thug) writes,
> A person I know is working on a computerized version of the OTP that
> extracts a truly random stream of bits from TV/RF static and massages it
> using a DSP to be highly variable (e.g.: no runs of 0's or 1's longer than
> 5 bits).

Cool!  You've managed to weaken the one time pad enough for someone to 
crack it!  [ I can collect statistics on the plaintext based on the fact
that if five zeroes occur in the OTP then the next bit is constrained to 
be one.  Of course, I don't have complete access to the OTP, but it's
an extremely useful statitistical foot-in-the-door.  ]

This failure occurred because your friend tried to create a number
sequence that is somehow "more random than random".  Such a sequence
is, by definition, weak.

-- Marc Ringuette (mnr@cs.cmu.edu)
NODE 2f3ce428Computerized OTP (was 5th AMENDMENT & DECRYPTION)
>thug@phantom.com (Murdering Thug) writes,
>> (e.g.: no runs of 0's or 1's longer than
>> 5 bits).

>Cool!  You've managed to weaken the one time pad enough for someone to 
>crack it!  

Taking 6-graph statistics, we seen that the entropy is 5.95, where it
should be 6.00.  Or in other words, .992 bits of entropy per bit
symbol.  That's not good.

Eric