Nth digit of PI
Steven D. Arnold
stevena at neosynapse.net
Sun Jun 18 18:52:44 EDT 2000
At 05:36 PM 6/16/2000 +0000, Robert Israel wrote:
>In article <394a5ed7.83928743 at 10.1.1.28>,
>Tim Dixon <tdixon.no at spam.fwi.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>This is a collosally bad idea, IMO.
>
> >Just for curiosity, why?
>
>Because the real key is the number of the digit that you start at, and
>that's pitifully small by cryptographic standards. The time to generate
>the n'th digit is not much less than the time to generate all the digits
>up to the n'th, given that you have lots of memory available. So the
>cryptanalyst with a computer somewhat bigger than yours could try all
>the keys you could be using.
Perhaps we could specify a key; the key would be a sequence which we would
find in pi. The next bit in pi would be the start of our one-time
pad. For example, the key might be the first ten words in today's London
Times.
This would likely give us a very large n and yet it is still an easy
requirement to transmit.
Course, this idea too might have holes the size of a Mack truck -- I liked
the previous idea too until you shot it down. ;-)
--
Steven D. Arnold Que quiero sera stevena at neosynapse.net
"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that
is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them!" -- Thoreau
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