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Comment by _fizz_buzz_ | Hacker News Reader

One-Time pad is not a practical solution in any sense. The key distribution becomes so impractical that there is basically no justification to ever use the one time pad. Also, it's a symmetric encryption algorithm and what you really need for end-to-end encryption in the sense they talk about here is an asymmetric encryption algorithm.

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I don’t know, is it that impractical for a group of conspirators to meet in person a single time, exchange a bunch of 1TB hard drives with identical one-time pads, and then conduct their business accordingly? Surely that’s enough for a substantial amount of communication. Impractical for large-scale communities of illicit behavior but definitely practical for small groups of people

Quite a few "asymmetric" encryption schemes are only asymmetric for as long as it takes to get both ends communicating via symmetric encryption. This is, most notably, how SSL/TLS works.

In this case, you'd only need the asymmetric encryption to distribute the one-time pads.

lol, your suggestion is to send a key through asymmetric encryption (which must be definition be as long as the plain text). Then you send an encrypted message. If someone eavesdropped on your key (send through asymmetric encryption) the message is compromised. You might as well send the complete message through asymmetric encryption then. You just wasted bytes and gained nothing in security. The problem with the one time pad is that it opens up a myriad of side channel attacks on the key.

Maybe. It really depends on actual use case. I remember reading a case about a drug ring that used half of a dollar bill to ensure that the person courier deals with is the right person.

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