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Mathematician warns NSA may be weakening next-gen encryption (www.newscientist.com)

submitted 1 year ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Mathematician warns NSA may be weakening next-gen encryption::Quantum computers may soon be able to crack encryption methods in use today, so plans are already under way to replace them with new, secure algorithms. Now it seems the US National Security Agency may be undermining that process

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[–] bitwaba@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

True encryption does exist, it's just that the encryption key is equally as long as the message itself which shows how impractical it is: if you have a method secure enough to send an encryption key of length X, why not just send the actual message of length X?

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's interesting. I've never heard that before. Do you have more information I can read about somewhere?

[–] Axel_Fl@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is that what they're talking about?

[–] wandermind@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But one-time pads aren't impractical like they said?

[–] emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago

One-time pads are impractical because the sender and the target need to meet up beforehand and agree on a code, and no one else should know this code. With modern encryption, this is not necessary. The target can come up with both the encryption and decryption algorithms, and send only the first to the sender publicly.