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1226. "Can't. Wait."; Keep critical data secure?
Topic Started: Jun 12 2014, 10:13 PM (218 Views)
tanonev
Junior Agent
So the usual topics that drive pedants to the forums are weapons and martial arts, followed by the physical sciences. I'm gonna break the mold by asking about the math :)

Earlier strips have established that the chip grants "access" (bypassing security) but not "accessibility" (knowing what information goes where). I'm guessing the analogy is that just like a ghost can walk through the walls of a vault to get to the stuff stored inside, the chip can "walk through a firewall" to get to the data on the other side. The problem is, encryption (in general) isn't a box you put AROUND data, it's a transformation you apply directly TO data. As a result, for many encryption schemes, "access" and "accessibility" are necessarily identical in that you know the secret data if and only if you know the key (which is itself also data) that goes with the secret data. I could be convinced that the chip might just have/enable absurd processing power that allows it to break asymmetric encryption schemes, but I'm having trouble seeing how the chip can get around fundamental mathematical results such as perfect secrecy. It's kind of like saying "when you add 1 and 1, the only answer you'll get is 2, but if we put this chip in your head, you can add 1 and 1 to get 3 and be right".

So does the chip break perfect-secrecy schemes like one-time pads? If so, what could possibly be invented that could keep critical data secure? If not, why isn't that the track being taken for securing critical data?
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Otter
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Third book in the Rachel Peng series. (Spoiler - Mako is... um... deeply involved in the process).
- Never send a ferret to do a weasel's work.

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