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Notice: GeekPress is back up and running, thanks to Paul! It's still a not-so-serious tech news blog, but the format is significantly looser. Diana, having given up programming for philosophy, has her own philosophical blog NoodleFood. More of her work can be found at DianaHsieh.com.

 

Harvard scientist outlines unbreakable code

3:58:32 am mst / 20 February 2001 found by paul / filed in cryptography / source NY Times 106 hits / 1 comment / 0 e-mails

A Harvard computer scientist claims to have invented a cryptography system that can be proven to be mathematically unbreakable.

His system is essentially a one-time pad cleverly plucked from a continuously generated stream of publically available random numbers. But as Bruce Schneier points out, it's not clear that this sort of provably secure code will make that much practical difference because would-be crackers will simply choose some other point of attack.

Comments

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Cryptome talks about it by MysteriousStranger 10:39:12 am mst / 20 February 2001 / # 1

Cryptome has a copy of the article followed by some commentary by someone who clearly knows whereof he speaks. This is less impressive than it sounds.