From: jpp@markv.com
Date: Thu, 28 Apr 94 19:20:55 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Random #'s via CD-ROM?
In-Reply-To: <199404290142.VAA04213@access.netaxs.com>
Message-ID: <9404281919.aa08006@hermix.markv.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


  This strikes me as another variant on the venerable 'book' cypher.    
To quote Kahn (is that even close?  The guy who wrote _The Code  
Breakers_.) 'What you gain in key size, you loose in key coherency.' 
In general book ciphers are not very strong.  (At least thats what I    
think the big boys said...) 
   
  But, speaking of random numbers.  In Crypto '92 (or '93?) there is    
this great protocol for two players (Andy and Beth say) to listen to a  
poorly heard (radio) source (a low power satalite, or perhaps Radio    
Free Bosnia) and extract a shared secret key -- even when an evil  
opponent (Eve say) is listening with much better equipment.  This is 
really a great result!  It is at least as exciting as DH key exchange  
(to me).  It's strength is based on probability and information theory    
and not on 'unproven' complexity theory assumtions (such as 'discrete   
logrithms are hard to compute').  But -- how do we make it work on the
net?

j'
--
		   O I am Jay Prime Positive jpp@markv.com
1250 bit fingerprint B06229 = B8 95 E0 AF 9A A2 CD A5  89 C9 F0 FE B4 3A 2C 3F
 524 bit fingerprint 2A915D = 8A 7C B9 F2 D5 46 4D ED  66 23 F1 71 DE FF 51 48
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