Re: [TSCM-L] Re: Acoustic Absorbing Materials

From: Peter Capek <ca..._at_ieee.org>
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2006 00:15:05 -0400
D..._at_geer.org wrote:

By one theory, public key cryptography was created by
the US Navy in WW2 when someone noted that if you
broadcast white noise on a known channel, then the
person wanting to communicate with you has only to
transmit on that self-same channel and, from that
person's point of view, they can do so in the clear.

An eavesdropper hears white noise but the base station,
as it knows what it is transmitting, has no difficulty
subtracting it out and thus recovering the counterparty
talking.  So, in your example, you replace the naturally
occuring white noise with your own white noise and,
bingo, you can silence the room, so to speak.  This
would be oh such a nasty gotcha if one's opponent were
to get physical access to your white noise generator
and could thus pull this on you in reverse...


But this isn't public key crypto as we use the term today; it's a one-time pad.

In fact, what is described here is (very roughly) the system that was set up to allow Roosevelt and Churchill to talk during WW II.  That arrangement used analog disks (records, I think we used to call them ;-) ) at each end as the "white noise" source. 
But it was really a one-time pad derived from a physical random number generator.

More details:  http://www.nsa.gov/publications/publi00019.cfm


Received on Sat Mar 02 2024 - 00:57:21 CST

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