3 ms·

Then I would XOR it with any plaintext of the same length and use the resulting "key" to satisfy my obligation under the law to enable "decrpytion" by the one-t

Then I would XOR it with any plaintext of the same length and use the resulting "key" to satisfy my obligation under the law to enable "decrpytion" by the one-time pad algorithm.

coldtea 7y ago
That would imply you're smarter and have more power than the law which is not the case. They'd ask you to provide actual readable files, pictures, etc, or else would reject your "decryption".
- gradschool 7y ago
  It is true but not really relevant that they're smarter and more powerful than me. Since they don't trust me, they won't let me decrypt the disk D but will demand the key K to do it themselves. Recall K = D XOR P for some readable plaintext pictures or files, etc., I've already chosen. The "decryption" yields the perfectly readable output P = D XOR K.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    Well, I read the original comment as being a: "here, K is the password, D XOR K is your results" idea -- based on that any D XOR K is technically a decryption, whether random stuff comes from the process. If you intend K to provide "perfectly readable output", then (1) if you actually produced the contents of D yourself to hide data, then you need to come up with some scheme so that K provides "perfectly readable output" and some alternative V provides D XOR V (or another decryption scheme) that gives you your actual secrets. I don't think it's that easy to have "perfectly readable data" on D XOR K plus have your secrets with another key. Except if you mean through steganography, but then K is not needed at all. (2) if you were just send a random noise drive to "frame you" then you need access to the drive to come up with a K so that D XOR K decrypts to valid data.
    - nybble41 7y ago
      This is a one-time pad. Given a ciphertext D it's trivial to come up with a key K that "decrypts" D to whatever plaintext P you want (K = D XOR P). This is why one-time pads are immune to brute-force search.

Then I would XOR it with any plaintext of the same length and use the resulting "key" to satisfy my obligation under the law to enable "decrpytion" by the one-time pad algorithm.

coldtea 7y ago

That would imply you're smarter and have more power than the law which is not the case. They'd ask you to provide actual readable files, pictures, etc, or else would reject your "decryption".

gradschool 7y ago
It is true but not really relevant that they're smarter and more powerful than me. Since they don't trust me, they won't let me decrypt the disk D but will demand the key K to do it themselves. Recall K = D XOR P for some readable plaintext pictures or files, etc., I've already chosen. The "decryption" yields the perfectly readable output P = D XOR K.
- coldtea 7y ago
  Well, I read the original comment as being a: "here, K is the password, D XOR K is your results" idea -- based on that any D XOR K is technically a decryption, whether random stuff comes from the process. If you intend K to provide "perfectly readable output", then (1) if you actually produced the contents of D yourself to hide data, then you need to come up with some scheme so that K provides "perfectly readable output" and some alternative V provides D XOR V (or another decryption scheme) that gives you your actual secrets. I don't think it's that easy to have "perfectly readable data" on D XOR K plus have your secrets with another key. Except if you mean through steganography, but then K is not needed at all. (2) if you were just send a random noise drive to "frame you" then you need access to the drive to come up with a K so that D XOR K decrypts to valid data.
  - nybble41 7y ago
    This is a one-time pad. Given a ciphertext D it's trivial to come up with a key K that "decrypts" D to whatever plaintext P you want (K = D XOR P). This is why one-time pads are immune to brute-force search.