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Introduction
In today's high speed, computer driven world it is becoming more and
more difficult to maintain a little privacy and dignity, whether at
the individual or corporate level. Every day, we send more and more
sensitive and personal data over the Internet, and Internet security
has become of prime importance. Financial information, medical histories,
product designs and other sensitive data are all exposed to possible
interception and / or misuse.
It is becoming more and more important to implement security for our
EMail, internal messages and disk files, especially over the Internet.
Songs of the Universe will not solve all of these problems, but it
can assure your computer security and privacy of communication through
the power of file and message encryption. Songs of the Universe provides
an encryption system so strong it would even strain the huge resources
of the government or military to crack just one small portion of your
data.
The Concept
Back in the early part of the 20th century, about the time of WWI,
a method of securing and sending messages was developed that proved
virtually unbreakable. It was known as the One-Time Pad. This was
simply a pad of printed forms containing long strings of letters
of the alphabet on one line and a line beneath with random letters
that were to be substituted for the letter on the line above. There
was usually one page in the pad for each day of the year. Each page
is known as the 'key page'.
The person sending the message would select the key page (or just
plain 'key' as it is now known) for the current date. S/he would
then go down the line and find the first letter of the message,
and substitute the letter on the lower line for the letter on the
upper line. This was repeated for every letter in the message. When
finished, the key page was destroyed, usually by burning it. It
was a very simple and elegant system.
This is what is known as a symmetrical system.
That is, the same key is used to encipher (or encrypt) a message
as is used to decipher it.
The person receiving the message would then take the key page for
the same date and use it to reverse the process, looking for the
letters on the lower line to find the original letters of the message.
Once the message was deciphered, this key page was also destroyed,
leaving no trace of the key.
This means that even if one message is cracked it will not compromise
the whole system. Since each message uses a different key, each
must be cracked individually, starting from scratch.
Our methods are much more sophisticated than this now, but the concept
remains the same.
The Problem
The main problem with the one-time pad was, and still is, in generating
the substitution string - the key. To be effective, the string has
to be totally random. Unfortunately, this is harder to do than it
sounds. Back in the WWI and WWII days, they usually employed people
to sit around with a bucket full of ping-pong balls with letters
and numbers on them. They were to pull a ball at random, write down
the letter and toss the ball back in the bucket.
Not only was this incredibly slow, it was incredibly boring. It
soon became apparent that personal influences crept into the key
strings. People tend to pull out letters they like and reject ones
they don't like. If they saw a couple of Q's or X's in a row, they
would shy away from choosing them again, sometimes substituting
some other letter because the mind tends to see patterns where none
exist. The mind is extremely good at matching patterns, and these
tendencies ended up skewing the randomness.
Later, when computers came around, numbers were substituted for
letters, making the keys more complex. This is good. Computers allowed
the use of something called a random number generator.
This is both good and not so good. The numbers turned out to be
not truly random. So the system was renamed a pseudo-random
number generator. PRNG's as they are called, also tend to show
patterns. In order to generate a number, the computer has to be
given a number to start with. This is called the seed.
Unfortunately, if you know the seed, you can reconstruct the series
of numbers used to encipher the message.
So now, instead of cracking the message, you only have to crack
the seed. This would then allow you to unravel the message like
a knit sweater with a loose string. Alternately, you could search
the message for repeated patterns. Both are long and complex processes,
but are done all the time. Only if the key is long (preferably as
long as the file or message) and totally random, showing no repeated
patterns is the message uncrackable, at least in the lifetime of
this universe.
Totally Random Key Generation
Fortunately for us, Mother Nature has provided the perfect answer:
Totally random noise, sometimes known as white noise. The sources
of the noise are as fascinating as they are varied. Stars, galaxies
and nebula are alive with radio signals, the nuclear furnace of
our own sun provides light turbulence, radio emissions and radiation
in abundance. Quantum particles rain down on us from all over the
universe. And of course there is the cosmic background radiation
left over from the biggest bang of all time.
Songs of the Universe adds incredible complexity to encryption by
using Mother Nature to develop our keys, thus eliminating the possibility
that someone might be able to duplicate the key generation process.
Much of our key data comes from radio telescopes around the world
that listen in on various radio frequencies and use the information
to map the universe, analyze galactic structure or even search for
extra-terrestrial intelligence.
We also use radioactive decay from various labs as well as thermal
noise from our own proprietary equipment. This assures that the
data is completely random. However, just in case, it is scanned
and analyzed for randomness to be sure that there are no phone calls
from ET, satellite signals that got in the way or other accidental
patterns that might show up.
So now Songs of the Universe is able to combine totally random keys
with the power of fast streaming ciphers and digital signatures
for a virtually uncrackable encryption system.
To learn more about cryptography and how Songs of the Universe
works, visit the Crypto School
"Life is entirely too important to be taken seriously."
-- Will The Geek
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