Cryptology and Data Secrecy : The Vernam Cipher

There is only one perfectly secure cryptosystem known of all the methods of encryption ever devised, only one has been mathematically proved to be completely secure. It is called the Vernam Cipher or one-time pad.
The worth of all other ciphers is based on computational security.
If a cipher is computationally secure this means the probability of cracking the encryption key using current computational technology and algorithms within a reasonable time is supposedly extremely small, yet not impossible.
In theory every cryptographic algorithm, except for the Vernam Cipher, can be broken given enough ciphertext and time.

For example the public key cryptosystems such as PGP and RSA are based on the following :
Calculate an integer N such that it has only two prime number factors f1 and f2. This triad of integers forms the basis of the encryption and decryption keys used in PK (Public Key) cryptosystems.
The security of these systems is simply based on the computational difficulty of calculating f2 and f1 from N if N is a very large integer.
To break this cipher N must be factored, and at the time these systems were devised the best publicly available factoring algorithms would take millions of years to factor a 200 digit number.
This does not logically exclude the possibility of a new factoring algorithm being discovered, or the existence of a secret factoring algorithm, or the invention of technology capable of running current factoring algorithms at high speed.

Computationally Secure cryptosystems

The use of public key cryptosystems has become commonplace, yet should their widespread presence in itself lead to an unquestioningly trust of the security of data encrypted using these methods?
•   How do you know the cryptosystem you use is actually safe?
•   Do you really understand how it works?
•   Do you think if a Government or military intelligence institution such as the NSA (National Security Agency) had a method of breaking the public key cryptosystems they would announce this fact?

As a result of work on a new form of computational technology known as the quantum computer now exists a factorisation algorithm to factor giant integers in linear time. This was devised in 1994 by Peter Shor from AT&T's Bell Laboratories.

A quantum factorisation engine running Shor's algorithm could factor a one hundred digit integer in few thousand arithmetic operations, which might well take only a matter of minutes.

Anyone with access to such a machine would easily be able to read any intercepted message encrypted using a pubic key cryptosystem. Prototype quantum computers are already operational (see the Scientific American article on the NMR quantum computer).

Now your former faith in computationally secure cryptosystems is thoroughly undermined it is time to introduce the Vernam cipher.

The Vernam Cipher or one-time-pad

In 1917 during the First World War the American scientist Gilbert Vernam was given the task of inventing an encryption method the Germans could not break by AT&T. What was devised was the only provably unbreakable encryption scheme known to this day.
Compared with most cryptosystems it is a very simple. To use a one-time-pad, you need 2 copies of the pad ( also known as the key ) which is a block of truly random data at least as long as the message you wish to encode. If the data on the pad is not truly random, the security of the pad is compromised.

This operation is performed adding (algebraically) the one-time-pad (the key) to the clear byte-stream. What you get is an absolute independent new byte-stream. This kind of operation is symmetrical, i.e. applying once more the same one-time-pad gives back the clear byte-stream.

It is currently used by Governments because they can safely communicate with their embassies via diplomatic bag.
Conclusion: If you are intending to send highly secure or confidential information over non-secure channels (i.e. Internet), and you require absolute certainty that the ciphertext will not be decrypted if intercepted, then there is no choice but to use the Vernam Cipher.
With this tool your messages will be safe, even from the NSA quantum factorisation engine. ( How do you know they don't have one ? )

Exploiting again the Vernam Cipher we created the Phoenix Protocol.