An (Important) Disproof of the One-Time Pad

This entire article is utterly false and misconceived. It asserts that because "ONETIMEPAD" will be encrypted as "ONETIMEPAD" one time in 141167095653376, one time pads are not actually secure. The reason this is false is that just as often, "ONETIMEPAD" will be encrpted as "TWOTIMEPAD", or any other 10 letter string. Thus, the encryped string provides no information about the plain text, and so is perfectly encrypted. This article utterly wrong.

Well, I now have a conclusive proof that I will never trust Zendo with my messages.

So it still fits the definition of perfect secrecy, but (with vanishingly small probability when the key is large) it&#x27;s possible for a key to be chosen that is more &quot;guessable&quot;?<p>I don&#x27;t think this is a problem. Depending on the guess for the key an attacker could get back <i>any possible message</i> as the plaintext. So there is no reason for them to believe that the message they obtain by using a simple key (e.g. AAAAAAAAAAAA as in the example) is the original plaintext?

I was skeptical at first, but it looks like TechCrunch&#x27;s foray into academic publishing is finally starting to pay off. It&#x27;s been amazing to follow their transition from a tech tabloid to a place you can find groundbreaking work in fields like cryptography.

This article makes me not trust Zendo.<p>If you&#x27;re going to take a pop at Shannon (and all the other cryptographers who support that) you probably need to i) have a cleaer description of what you&#x27;re doing and ii) do some math.

And, sadly, completely incorrect.

Next up: TechCrunch solves the halting problem by using<p><pre><code> while(1){ ; } </code></pre> and<p><pre><code> exit(1); </code></pre> as counterexamples.

This is a case where the article author is <i>either</i> a moron, <i>or</i> a liar.<p>Either genuinely believe that he is correct (in which case he is a moron) or he <i>doesn&#x27;t</i> genuinely believe it, but is saying it for some reason (in which case he is a liar).<p>Those are the only two possibilities here, and neither is flattering.

tldr:<p>an adversary could make a really lucky guess at the key therefore onetime pad is insecure.