Elementrix POTP

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Hello again cypherpunks:

Sorry to continue "beating a dead horse" here, but I forwarded a few
C-punks' messages regarding the Elementrix "Power One-Time Pad" to
this person, and I thought you might be interested in her (somewhat
cryptic <g>) response.

Forwarded message follows:
______________________________________________________________________
>Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 20:34:53 +0200
>From: Maia Aron <maia@elementrix.co.il>
>To: liberty@gate.net
>Subject: Re: POTP
>
>
>Hi, it took me a little while to respond; we've been getting a lot of 
>inquiries following the Interop show.
>
>The short answer is: everything that people are guessing we are, including 
>the guesses mentioned in the cypherpunks info you attached, is not what we 
>are. I.e., it's not an autokey cipher, it's not like DES, there is no way 
>to track relationships between yesterday's and today's ciphertexts. The 
>encryption is not done by using an encryption algorithm.
>
> Unfortunately, and we really mean unfortunately, we can only reveal what 
>"it is" to people who agree to a non-disclosure arrangement while we're 
>patent pending. Otherwise we would have no problem revealing the whole 
>method. So far, every international expert who has reviewed the method 
>agrees (after many, many hours and days of trying to find holes) that POTP 
>really does what we say it does.
>
>You can share this with whomever you'd like. Sorry I can't say much more.
>
>
>
>Regards,
>
>Maia Aron
>Vice President, Marketing
>Elementrix Technologies Inc.
>850 Third Avenue
>New York, NY 10022
>
>phone: 212-888-8879
>fax:   212-935-3882
>email: maia@elementrix.co.il
______________________________________________________________________
End of forwarded message.

So, I guess we know what they *aren't*, but not what they *are*...Is
this the first example (in modern history) of encryption that's *not*
done by using an encryption algorithm, or am I just missing something?
JMR


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Regards, Jim Ray

Ray's Corolary to Murphy's Law:
"You will be spared _NOTHING_." -- Peter C. Ray [my dad].
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
PGP key Fingerprint  51 5D A2 C3 92 2C 56 BE  53 2D 9C A1 B3 50 C9 C8 
Key id. #  E9BD6D35  James Milton Ray   <liberty@gate.net>  IANAL
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Help Phil! email zldf@clark.net or see http://www.netresponse.com/zldf
_______________________________________________________________________

> Unfortunately, and we really mean unfortunately, we can only reveal what 
>"it is" to people who agree to a non-disclosure arrangement while we're 
>patent pending. Otherwise we would have no problem revealing the whole 
>method. So far, every international expert who has reviewed the method 
>agrees (after many, many hours and days of trying to find holes) that POTP 
>really does what we say it does.

Maybe you could name those experts who have inspected it - thanks.


Kari

> liberty@gate.net (Jim Ray) writes:
> Sorry to continue "beating a dead horse" here, but I forwarded a few
> C-punks' messages regarding the Elementrix "Power One-Time Pad" to
> this person, and I thought you might be interested in her (somewhat
> cryptic <g>) response.

Actually, no, and I'll tell you why.  My only interest in this product
is that you're flogging it as a one time pad, and just calling something
a one time pad doesn't make it so.  From all that's been exposed so far,
it looks like it doesn't match the standard definition of a one time pad
in standard cryptologic works.  Maybe it's something <like> it, and maybe
not -- but if they're saying it <is> a one time pad they should be
prepared to prove it.  Reading their warmed-over press releases doesn't
interest me at all.

Except for one thing, i.e. this line from the last blather:

>The encryption is not done by using an encryption algorithm.

'Nuff said for now, I think.

	Jim Gillogly
	Mersday, 20 Winterfilth S.R. 1995, 17:05

> > Sorry to continue "beating a dead horse" here, but I forwarded a few
> > C-punks' messages regarding the Elementrix "Power One-Time Pad" to
> > this person, and I thought you might be interested in her (somewhat
> > cryptic <g>) response.
...

> Except for one thing, i.e. this line from the last blather:
> 
> >The encryption is not done by using an encryption algorithm.
> 
> 'Nuff said for now, I think.

Not quite enough for my taste.  If this system can be uniquely initiated
by a finite sequence of bits transferred between the two parties and can
be used to encrypt more than that many bits, it is not a one-time-pad -
period - full stop.

By definition, the information content of a one-time-pad is one bit per
bit of transmitted information.  If a finite number of bits is enough to
initialize this system, then by definition, it ceases to be a
one-time-pad as soon as one more than that many bits have been
transmitted using those bits as the initialization key.  This is a
direct result of information theory, and cannot be circumvented by any
amount of wizardry or genius.

Even if you found that information theory is palpably inconsistent, the
definition of a one-time-pad (as defined by Shannon in his second most
famous 1949 paper) is in terms of information theory, and therefore, the
end of the theory is also the end of the definition of a one-time-pad.

-- 
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