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Comment by bonzoesc | Hacker News Reader

Usability. One time pads have been around forever, are provably secure, but a pain in the ass.

Modern symmetric ciphers solve the "you need to securely exchange as much key material as you wish to send data" using mathematical formulas to stretch key material. Asymmetric ciphers use mathematical formulas to fix "you need a secure way to exchange keys."

Unfortunately, the math can't be probably secure, only believed secure and proved insecure.

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>Usability. One time pads have been around forever, are provably secure, but a pain in the ass.

With cell phones so widespread, I wondered why someone doesn't write a one time pad app. People could share gigabyte-sized pads via trusted wireless or a cable if they prefer.

http://softthere.com/projects/otp/

The only reason to use one-time pads is an extraordinary level of paranoia. If you are paranoid enough to need a one-time pad then it makes little sense for you as a private citizen to trust that hardware you take into public places hasn't been compromised. Manual creation and transmission of the encrypted message is the only approach that makes sense.

If lots of people adopted one-time pads it might hinder NSA et al but this would be akin to trying to convince people to wear masks whenever they are in public to hinder monitoring with CCTV.

Not sure why this is the case though. What makes it inherently impossible to prove something is secure?

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