Also, does anyone know of a car company that DOESN'T offer a warranty on a new car? Now, the last time I checked, there's no law saying that car companies HAVE to offer a warranty.
What does warranty have to do with liability?
Imagine a car company offered you a car under the following conditions: We haven't really made sure that the wheels are properly attached to the car. Therefore, if one or more wheels fall off at speeds above 25 mph and this causes you injury or other damage, you agree not to sue us. Do you think this would hold up in court?
Newtonian mechanics is still correct - in the limit of small velocities (compared to the speed of light). Relativity hasn't invalidated Newtonian mechanics, but shown that it (Newtonian mechanics) is a special case in a more general theory.
I don't assume that quantum mechanics is the ultimate theory; in fact, it isn't today (think quantum field theories). But I do assume that any (existing or future) theory cannot contradict quantum mechanics, but must contain it as a special case.
Dosent quantum cryptography depend on the assumption that it is impossible to copy this stream of encoded photons without leaving a trace?
Yes. However, quantum mechanics is an extremely well-established theory.
As a physicist, I'm reluctant to call anything a fact. However, just because I cannot prove that (say) gravity won't cease to exist tomorrow morning, doesn't mean I live under the constant fear that this might in fact happen. Much in the same way, I'm confident that nothing is wrong with quantum mechanics.
It's the way master-keys systems works, you take of pieces until you have the most generic key, the most generic keys needs inherently to be the smallest and thus the least safe.
The master key is usually the largest, not the smallest, so that people cannot file down their keys to master keys.
Why stop here? The RIAA could lobby for a law that everybody has to pay a fixed percentage of their income to the RIAA member companies. Once this is done, they could even stop producing music at all, which has the additional "benefit" that they don't need to worry about copyright infringement any more.
Quantum Cryptography has some potential as it provides a mathematically verifiable form of perfect cryptography, since it is one time pads.
Quantum cryptography solves one specific problem: to share (or, strictly speaking, expand) a secret over a distance. This secret can be a one-time pad.
However, sharing a secret over a distance is just one building block of a cryptosystem. There are many others it doesn't help with, e.g. sharing an initial key, or digital signatures.
Just don't turn up. After all, if I receive a letter from Uzbekistan telling me I'm due in their courts (I'm British), there's no reason I have to accept their judgement.
If the Hague treaty becomes ratified, the UK would be required to enforce a Uzbekistan court rule against you.
An ordeal every time someone sends you a Microsoft Office file. These are basically standard in the business world.
This problem will solve itself. Microsoft Office documents impose such a huge competitive disadvantage (viruses, leakage of internal information,...) that all businesses which consider them standard will become bankrupt sooner or later. Fortunately, a majority of companies already despises Microsoft Office documents.
I don't believe that linux is ready or designed for home use
I don't believe that Linux is designed for anything. Keep in mind that there isn't a single driving force behind Linux which works towards a well-defined design goal. Instead,
Linux is a collection of software, written by many different people with different goals and ideas. IMHO, this is both its weakness and its strength.:-)
According to many online sources (e.g. the U.S. Copyright Office or Lawnotes), works created by the U.S. Government are not copyrightable. However, the government can aquire copyrights for works created by others.
Well, the patent seems to cover the lossless part of JPEG compression. In fact, it appears to cover more or less all lossless compression methods, including Huffman and run-length coding.
Maybe we should switch to an uncompressed image format?;-(
That would make sense if RSA hadn't patented their algorithm.
True, but a different situation. RSA was the first, and for years the only, (pratical) algorithm to solve a specific problem (the problem of key distribution). It's different if you patent a symmetric encryption algorithm, because there's a large number of unpatented symmetric encryption algorithms to choose from.
The hypothesis for this project was that unconditional cryptography is possible if the random number generator has perfect probability and is mathematically random.
If by "unconditional cryptography" he means information theoretical security, this hypothesis is provably wrong. Otherwise, I'd like to know what advantage his scheme offers with respect to (e.g.) the Blum-Blum-Schub generator.
Re:No such thing as unbreakable encryption
on
Animated Encryption
·
· Score: 2
I should probably have been more specific in my original posting. By unbreakable I mean information theoretically secure, a mathematically well-defined property which is in fact achievable and achieved by the One-Time Pad. I have given a rough definition here.
I'll agree that one time pads are the only true secure form of cryptography, but that is still not reason enough not to develop more/better algorithms which are more effective in other areas.
Any truly unbreakable cipher (in the information theoretical sense) needs a random key at least as long as the plaintext. This is provable. Therefore, no information theoretically unbreakable cipher can exist which is more effective than the One-Time Pad.
If it is more effective, it is not unbreakable. Of course, this says nothing about usefulness. In fact, effective but breakable ciphers are more useful than unbreakable ciphers in almost all cases.
I won't discuss if it compromises security, since I'm too lazy to define mathematically what compromised security means.:) But one thing is for sure: such a scheme is not information theoretically unbreakable. Please see my posting elsewhere in this thread for a more elaborate explanation.
Such a scheme may well be good enough in pratice, however you can no longer prove mathematically that it is unbreakable.
An attacker with enough resources could encrypt all possible 2048 byte paintexts with all possible 2047 byte keys. For some of the 2^2048 plaintexts, it will not be possbile to generate the given ciphertext with any of the 2^2047 keys. The attacker can rule these out as possible plaintexts. No longer are all possible plaintexts equally probable -- therefore, it's not unbreakable in the sense defined in my previous posting.
Patenting a new encryption algorithm is not only evil, but also stupid. Nobody will try to break a patented algorithm, and without years and years of expert cryptographers trying to break an encryption scheme, one cannot consider it secure.
Re:You're right, there's no reason for alternative
on
Animated Encryption
·
· Score: 2
Since any truly unbreakable encryption scheme has to use keys at least as long as the One-Time-Pad, I do in fact consider the problem of unbreakable encryption solved. No need for further research.
Of course, there's a lot of need for research into ciphers which are not mathematically provable to be unbreakable, but are more practical than the One-Time Pad.:)
Very roughly, it goes like this: We define "unbreakable" as the following property: An eavesdropper cannot learn anything (except the length) by looking at the ciphertext, i.e. given a ciphertext, every plaintext of the same length is equally probable. This property can only hold if there are at least as many keys as possible plaintexts, therefore the key cannot be shorter than the plaintext.
I would be interested to see that, as even a simple variant (compressing the plaintext then using OTP) requires less key data...
This case, the compressed plaintext counts as the plaintext.:)
An unlikely combination of interests -- cartoons and math -- has inspired a sophomore at the University of Dayton to develop a new, and potentially unbreakable, encryption technology.
There already is an unbreakable encryption: the One-Time Pad. Furthermore, it is mathematically provable that no unbreakable encryption can have a shorter key than the One-Time Pad. Since the One-Time Pad algorithm is already extremely simple and fast (XORing the key with the plaintext), I don't see a need for any other unbreakable encryption.
Slashdot Mirror
No, coypright infringement is not stealing. I recommend that you look up in dictionary what stealing actually means.
No matter how often the RIAA and its promoters claim that stealing and copyright infringement are the same thing: it's simply not true.
I recommend that you open a dictionary and look up what stealing actually means.
Not yet. Since GNU software is also used outside the U.S., the objections are still valid until the patent has expired everywhere.
What does warranty have to do with liability?
Imagine a car company offered you a car under the following conditions: We haven't really made sure that the wheels are properly attached to the car. Therefore, if one or more wheels fall off at speeds above 25 mph and this causes you injury or other damage, you agree not to sue us. Do you think this would hold up in court?
Newtonian mechanics is still correct - in the limit of small velocities (compared to the speed of light). Relativity hasn't invalidated Newtonian mechanics, but shown that it (Newtonian mechanics) is a special case in a more general theory.
I don't assume that quantum mechanics is the ultimate theory; in fact, it isn't today (think quantum field theories). But I do assume that any (existing or future) theory cannot contradict quantum mechanics, but must contain it as a special case.
Yes. However, quantum mechanics is an extremely well-established theory.
As a physicist, I'm reluctant to call anything a fact. However, just because I cannot prove that (say) gravity won't cease to exist tomorrow morning, doesn't mean I live under the constant fear that this might in fact happen. Much in the same way, I'm confident that nothing is wrong with quantum mechanics.
The master key is usually the largest, not the smallest, so that people cannot file down their keys to master keys.
Why stop here? The RIAA could lobby for a law that everybody has to pay a fixed percentage of their income to the RIAA member companies. Once this is done, they could even stop producing music at all, which has the additional "benefit" that they don't need to worry about copyright infringement any more.
Quantum cryptography solves one specific problem: to share (or, strictly speaking, expand) a secret over a distance. This secret can be a one-time pad.
However, sharing a secret over a distance is just one building block of a cryptosystem. There are many others it doesn't help with, e.g. sharing an initial key, or digital signatures.
If the Hague treaty becomes ratified, the UK would be required to enforce a Uzbekistan court rule against you.
This problem will solve itself. Microsoft Office documents impose such a huge competitive disadvantage (viruses, leakage of internal information, ...) that all businesses which consider them standard will become bankrupt sooner or later. Fortunately, a majority of companies already despises Microsoft Office documents.
I don't believe that Linux is designed for anything. Keep in mind that there isn't a single driving force behind Linux which works towards a well-defined design goal. Instead, Linux is a collection of software, written by many different people with different goals and ideas. IMHO, this is both its weakness and its strength. :-)
Don't know about Malaysia, but in the laws of most countries copyright infringement is distinct from stealing.
According to many online sources (e.g. the U.S. Copyright Office or Lawnotes), works created by the U.S. Government are not copyrightable. However, the government can aquire copyrights for works created by others.
Well, the patent seems to cover the lossless part of JPEG compression. In fact, it appears to cover more or less all lossless compression methods, including Huffman and run-length coding.
Maybe we should switch to an uncompressed image format? ;-(
True, but a different situation. RSA was the first, and for years the only, (pratical) algorithm to solve a specific problem (the problem of key distribution). It's different if you patent a symmetric encryption algorithm, because there's a large number of unpatented symmetric encryption algorithms to choose from.
If by "unconditional cryptography" he means information theoretical security, this hypothesis is provably wrong. Otherwise, I'd like to know what advantage his scheme offers with respect to (e.g.) the Blum-Blum-Schub generator.
I should probably have been more specific in my original posting. By unbreakable I mean information theoretically secure, a mathematically well-defined property which is in fact achievable and achieved by the One-Time Pad. I have given a rough definition here.
Any truly unbreakable cipher (in the information theoretical sense) needs a random key at least as long as the plaintext. This is provable. Therefore, no information theoretically unbreakable cipher can exist which is more effective than the One-Time Pad.
If it is more effective, it is not unbreakable. Of course, this says nothing about usefulness. In fact, effective but breakable ciphers are more useful than unbreakable ciphers in almost all cases.
I won't discuss if it compromises security, since I'm too lazy to define mathematically what compromised security means. :) But one thing is for sure: such a scheme is not information theoretically unbreakable. Please see my posting elsewhere in this thread for a more elaborate explanation.
Such a scheme may well be good enough in pratice, however you can no longer prove mathematically that it is unbreakable.
An attacker with enough resources could encrypt all possible 2048 byte paintexts with all possible 2047 byte keys. For some of the 2^2048 plaintexts, it will not be possbile to generate the given ciphertext with any of the 2^2047 keys. The attacker can rule these out as possible plaintexts. No longer are all possible plaintexts equally probable -- therefore, it's not unbreakable in the sense defined in my previous posting.
Patenting a new encryption algorithm is not only evil, but also stupid. Nobody will try to break a patented algorithm, and without years and years of expert cryptographers trying to break an encryption scheme, one cannot consider it secure.
Since any truly unbreakable encryption scheme has to use keys at least as long as the One-Time-Pad, I do in fact consider the problem of unbreakable encryption solved. No need for further research.
Of course, there's a lot of need for research into ciphers which are not mathematically provable to be unbreakable, but are more practical than the One-Time Pad. :)
Very roughly, it goes like this: We define "unbreakable" as the following property: An eavesdropper cannot learn anything (except the length) by looking at the ciphertext, i.e. given a ciphertext, every plaintext of the same length is equally probable. This property can only hold if there are at least as many keys as possible plaintexts, therefore the key cannot be shorter than the plaintext.
This case, the compressed plaintext counts as the plaintext. :)
There already is an unbreakable encryption: the One-Time Pad. Furthermore, it is mathematically provable that no unbreakable encryption can have a shorter key than the One-Time Pad. Since the One-Time Pad algorithm is already extremely simple and fast (XORing the key with the plaintext), I don't see a need for any other unbreakable encryption.