Slashdot Mirror
What Would You Do With a New Form of Encryption?
Kip Knight asks: "I've been sitting on an invention for six months now. I'm debating whether to 'give it to the world' or patent it. I would obviously like to feed my family on the fruits of my endeavour but don't see much hope in the open source route. My invention improves upon the 80 year old One-Time Pad encryption turning it into a 'Many-Time Pad'. Since I haven't got my export license to speak about the details yet, I won't describe further. The advantages are proof (i.e. unbreakable) against brute force attacks and known-plaintext attacks (unlike the OTP). The disadvantage is carrying around a very large digital key (which could easily fit on one of those USB memory key fobs). My question is this: Could I sell enough $10 shareware GPG extensions to compensate for not locking in 20 years of patent protection (and the $20,000 to patent it)?" While the claims made by the submittor have yet to withstand the crucial test of time (and prying eyes), if you had developed a new form of encryption, what would you do?
Well, I take back my comments about his AOL address. Anyone who likes the Apple Newton is obviously intelligent. Don't moderate me funny, I'm serious.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
...next they're coming after the lowest form of life on Earth: helpless technologists that fear and despise lawyers.
Shannon proved the OTP to be a secure cypher some years after 2WW. Also "multiple" OTP really IS a VERY secure cypher ( any cryptographer will argee ). Take a really long key with a good random entrophy, 10 Gigabite long key, no problem, ultimate cypher.
So you can patent it, you can brand it, you can sell it, whatever.
But you are missing one crucial point here ( and most of the Slashdot readers also ).
The PROBLEM is that you can NOT use or even dare to sell to the public such a cypher ! Why do you think that RSA released so short-key 128, 256, 1024... encryption only ?? Do you think that RSA choosed this short-bit keys in idle fency ?
The answer is: you can use only APPROVED cyphers and cryptography, this means weak, legal, breakable.
By "breakable" understand breakable by federal and military super computers not by your PC of course.
Your cypher must be agreed by many federal commitees and such a "nasty" OTP cypher will be shut down
( I am 99.9% sure ).
Save your money and brain time.
...it's just that technologists are the weakest of the weak when it comes to understanding and exercising their legal rights.
Do you have any formal training in information theory, number theory, or advanced mathematics? Just because something that you have created in your bedroom appears to be secure, chances are an experienced cryptanalyst can probably find numerous flaws with it in only a few minutes. Why try and reinvent the wheel... good crypto is out there, take the time to implement it properly. Also, if you claim its provably secure, I'd like to see your proof. You claim the key is long and could fit on a USB device. Well, if it has a long key, how is it different than a one time pad? If it has a long key that you feed into some algorithm in an OFB-like mode, you really haven't invented anything new.