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Israeli Firm Claims Unbreakable Encryption

Posted by timothy on from the jackson-pollock-claims-prior-art dept.

Several readers have pointed to an Israeli company's claim of achieving unbreakable encryption. The linked article reports this claim uncritically. Do you think there's such a thing as unbreakable encryption? This isn't the first time someone's made this claim, or second, or third ...

2 of 631 comments (clear)

  1. Re:One Time Pad by jtdubs · · Score: 5, Insightful

    One time pads are not uncrackable by definition. They have two weak points.

    1) The generation of the pads.

    One time pads are as crackable as your method for generating the pads. If your pad is TRULY random than it can't be cracked via statistics and probability. You must also be sure that no one else saw the pads or had access to the same entropy pool you used to generate the pads.

    2) The distribution of the pads.

    Both parties need a copy of the pad for it to work. How do the parties get the pads? Is this process secure? If not, than the quality of the pad is moot.

    Justin Dubs

  2. The telltale signs of snakeoil encryption by philipsblows · · Score: 5, Insightful

    From the press release or whatever that is:

    Meganet Corporation's founder, Saul Backal, claims that its solution can put an end to these problems. Meganet offers a patented non-linear data mapping technology[1], called VME (Virtual Matrix Encryption)[2], that creates exceptionally random cipher text[3] and combines it with a one million-bit key[4], which is unheard of in today's data security markets. Competing solutions offer a maximum of 256 bits[5].
    "There is nothing stronger in existence,"[6] says 38-year-old Backal, a dual Israeli-U.S. citizen[7] who was a tank commander in the IDF in the Lebanon war[8]. "All other encryption methods have been compromised in the last five to six years."[9]
    • [1] A cool, wordy name for this new, fantastic technology
    • [2] An even cooler, trademark-able acronym
    • [3] Hand waving
    • [4] An excessively-large encryption key, to impress us
    • [5] A dig on current encryption key size, since smaller keys == less encrypted...
    • [6] Outlandish claim
    • [7] Mysterious lineage of the founder. Hmmmmm.
    • [8] Tank commanders. Does anyone understand encryption better than these guys?
    • [9] Article claims this one has been in development for 11+ years... see how long it takes to cryptanalyze having appeared on slashdot!

    Even though this is probably bogus, the prize for breaking it looks interesting

    In an attempt to prove VME's strength, Meganet began offering prizes such as a Ferrari or $1m. to anyone who could break into a VME-protected file. So far, two million people have attempted to crack the code, but none have managed.