lwp@garnet.msen.com (Lou Poppler) writes: important postings. Some time ago it was asked why Vernor Vinge made passing reference to humans' naivete in trusting public key encryption, and some posters were seeking to contact professor
I don't recall the conversation, but it could refer to his recent novel "A Fire Upon the Deep." Our galaxy is divided into a number of zones where computation can be easier or harder than in the particular section where the Earth hangs out. The fastest zones have computational ability so far beyond what's physically possible in our zone that we don't understand it. In this situation you can't trust your security to merely computationally difficult problems like factoring large numbers: the denizens of the faster zones could crack them faster than slower communicators could enumerate them. The protagonists spent a fair amount of time on a courier ship that was carrying as its cargo 1/3 of a one-time-pad, which was intended to get to the buyer and be XORed with the other two pieces. This was a valuable cargo. After it became clear that this 1/3 was potentially compromised it was used for some important but less provably reliable communications. Jim Gillogly Trewesday, 15 Solmath S.R. 1995, 01:49