Hello my friend,
Once again, regrets that I did not find this article during the "upvote" window.
I have shared your skepticism regarding crypto algorithms for many years. Have you ever encountered a fellow calling himself the "Crypto-Maverick?" He published an interesting book some years ago questioning the reliability of the public key encryption systems and speculating that they all have back doors.
One of the "proofs" he offered for that conjecture is the anecdotal evidence that when he posted certain comments and questions on usenet crypto groups, he was met with utter silence...
In any case, are there any crypto algorithms that you trust, particularly in the cryptocurrency area? It is quite distressing to me to think that my greatest potential store of wealth in BTC is ultimately vulnerable...
The only provably secure encryption method that I know of and can actually understand and/or write a proof for is, of course, the Vernam Cipher also known as the "One-Time Pad."
Thanks for another great article.
😄😇😄
No problem. I always appreciate your replies, with or w/o upvote.
"Crypto-Maverick" does ring a bell, but I do not recall how and what and why.
Concerning your concerns, I think you must always diversify. I am not putting my money in BTC and not just for this reason, but also because I have my doubts about where it came from (who is Satoshi?). Saver crypto's are those that use chained encryption, such as X11 and X13. Which is -in a way- also diversification; not going with just one method.
Outside of crypto's I believe in silver. Especially silver coins of 1 oz (but not the eagle - too many fakes going round). I also have a few 1 kg silver coins, but I fear they will be harder to trade when I need it.
I do not trust gold, which is funny in a way, because I also don't trust its cryptographic counterpart.
Also funny that you mention the Vernam Cipher because I have written a program that uses this algorithm (combined with a few minor tricks to further confuse the possible attacker), which I use for anything that I want to encrypt. It can take any jpeg file and uses its pixel data as key. If you're interested I can send you the source.
I've known of the Vernam Cipher since reading about it in Scientific American way back in the early '80s... And I've written several implementations of it in code.
I'm of course interested in what you've done with jpegs, but (based entirely on your very brief description) my comment would be that as I understand one time pads, the only security is in the randomness of the keys. Thus I wouldn't expect a jpeg of any "real image" to be sufficiently random to be trusted.
I think metals are a good store of value, at least up until we can regularly mine the asteroids at a reasonable cost. ;)
I have found (in the past) at least partial copies of the Crypto Maverick's book on http://archive.org... If I come across that again I'll send you a link.
Thanks for your comprehensive reply, my friend! How is your big Tesla project coming along these days?
Here is my version. Watch the comKey() routine that selects just the compressed pixel data, which is quite random, I think. Also there is some other trickery to mislead the attackers.
The lab is being prepared for testing again. (starting last weekend as the rain season is finally over :) )
I'll do a short post on the cleaning up and preparing, soon.
Thanks for the code listing.
I look forward to your post on the lab progress. ;)