Jit schrijft: "Het lijkt erop dat de 'graal' van de cryptografie-wereld gevonden is. Een bruikbare codering waarvan ook nog eens wiskundig bewezen kan worden dat ie onbreekbaar is. Alle tot op heden bekende en gebruikte versleutelmethodes gaan uit van het principe dat er niet genoeg rekenkracht is om die codering te breken (tot ze de DPC tegen komen natuurlijk ). De enige methodes die wiskundig gezien onkraakbaar zijn (one-time pad) waren nog niet nuttig inzetbaar, maar dat lijkt nu dus opgelost.":
In essence, the researcher, Dr. Michael Rabin and his Ph.D. student Yan Zong Bing, have discovered a way to make a code based on a key that vanishes even as it is used. While they are not the first to have thought of such an idea, Dr. Rabin says that never before has anyone been able to make it both workable and to prove mathematically that the code cannot be broken.
"This is the first provably unbreakable code that is really efficient," Dr. Rabin said. "We have proved that the adversary is helpless."
[...] Someone who uses one of today's commercially available coding systems, Dr. Lipton explained, uses the same key — mathematical formulas for encoding and decoding — over and over. Eventually, they may be forced, perhaps by a court order, to give up the key. Or the key may be stolen. But with Dr. Rabin's system, the message stays secret forever because the code uses a stream of random numbers that are plugged into the key for encoding and decoding. The numbers are never stored in a computer's memory, so they essentially vanish as the message is being encrypted and decrypted.
[...] Some say that a provably unbreakable code could have profound effects, keeping secret messages secret forever. But others say that codes today are already so good that there is little to be gained by making them provably, rather than just probably, unbreakable.
Lees het originele artikel hier bij de NY Times (gratis registratie nodig), of een Nederlands artikel hier bij Fok!Zine.