[Cryptography] New White Paper: GhostLine - Information-Theoretically Secure Multi-Party Chat

[Ron Garret]

> On Sep 5, 2025, at 9:02 PM, Ferecides de Siros via cryptography <cryptography at metzdowd.com> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I would like to share my new white paper for community discussion and feedback.

I'm posting this as a public service to the crypto list.  I looked at this paper so you don't have to.  The paper appears superficially plausible, but the general heuristic that any mention of a one-time-pad is a strong indicator of crackpottery applies here.  AFAICT on a cursory reading, the paper isn't wrong, it just leaves out one teensy little detail: key exchange.  There is a reason that OTP is never used in practice despite being information-theoretically secure.

There are additional clues: the "From" header lists the senders name as "Ferecides de Siros" [1] but the message body and the paper both say that the author's name is "Hitokiri Battosai" [2], and the "about me" page on the web site listed in the contact information in the paper says "I'm Aristoh4ck8r, the enigmatic force behind the curtain."

My bogometer is pegged.

rg

---

[1] https://en.absolutviajes.com/Greece/ferecides-of-siros/ <https://en.absolutviajes.com/Greece/ferecides-of-siros/>

[2] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Hitokiri+Battousai <https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Hitokiri+Battousai>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/attachments/20250906/b7617dda/attachment.htm>