[Cryptography] Brainstorming for encrypted text messaging ideas...with a twist

[Ron Garret]

On Jun 17, 2017, at 5:04 PM, Grant Schultz <gschultz at kc.rr.com> wrote:

> On 06/15/2017 07:32 PM, Grant Schultz wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>> What if the encryption method was the one-time pad?  Naively, you could
>>> carry a one-time pad on paper, along with a pencil.  You would perform
>>> the en/decryption manually, and type the message into the phone.  (Of
>>> course the smartphone with its cameras would be in your pocket during
>>> en/decryption.)
>> bear at sonic.net wrote:
> It would work, but you'd want something less unwieldy than a one-time pad. I think you would want some kind of purely mechanical device, so that users could verify for themselves that it is unhacked and unhackable.  All parts visible.
> 
> Yes, the all-parts-visible is the important aspect.

That won’t help unless you have designed and fabricated it entirely by yourself using 100% hand-operated tools, and if you do that then it will almost certainly be insecure because of something you overlooked.  It’s possible to hide a back door even in a mechanical device if it gets complicated enough.

rg

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/attachments/20170618/905cfe48/attachment.html>