From: Rick Osborne <osborne@gateway.grumman.com>
Date: Mon, 27 Jan 1997 18:31:58 -0800 (PST)
To: paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk
Subject: Re: OTP security
Message-ID: <3.0.32.19970127213110.00a07440@gateway.grumman.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Paul replied:
>Depends on how that 16th bit is related to the other bits and whether 
>these predictable bits give any information about the other bits on 
>the disk.

Yes, I had figured that if the bits depended on eachother, then it would
blow the whole system.  

[Yet another case of my fingers lagging behind my brain.]

What I was thinking was more along the lines of something like:

1.You've got 16 hardware devices that each generate random noise.
2.One of the devices fails (or is sabotaged) and emits a predictable stream
(10101...)
3.The other 15 devices are just fine, and the stream generated by one
device does not effect the stream of another.
4.You do not know of the (failure/sabotage) until *after* you've generated
your encyrted documents and they are out of your hands.

So the revamped question is:
How secure are those documents now?
_________ o s b o r n e @ g a t e w a y . g r u m m a n . c o m _________
Good evening... as a duly appointed representative of the city, county and
state of New York, I order you to cease any and all supernatural activity
and return forthwith to your place or origin, or to the nearest convenient
parallel dimension.