🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <4209@june.cs.washington.edu> randy@june.cs.washington.edu (William Randy Day) writes:
>I'd like to know what a one time pad is.

This is described in David Kahn's "The Codebreakers", which is "must"
reading (find the hardback, which was a best seller, rather than the
abridged paperback, which omitted a lot of interesting technical stuff,
presumably on the theory that the American reading public is stupid).

The general idea is that encryption is performed using a truly random
key stream, which both parties have a copy of, and as the key stream
is used, it is destroyed (as opposed to eventually being re-used).
There are several variations on this theme, but this is the essence.

The "one-time pad" method gets its name from the small pads containing
keys that spies (particularly Soviet agents) would use.  As a sheet
was used, it was torn off and destroyed (presumably by burning).