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Re: Holocomm: Secrecy by Delocalization

On Tue, 31 Mar 1998, Mark A. Carlson wrote:

>Ed Gerck wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> Further information is available at
>> http://novaware.cps.softex.br/holocomm.htm/
>> 
>
>Interesting marketing blurb, but I would like more details
>on the algorithm.

mark:

Thanks for the question.

It is not marketing blurb. It is the first practical and workable
quantum encryption system. 

>
>> Holocomm is neither cryptography nor steganography, even though both
>> share properties with it. It is not cryptography because the encoded
>> information cannot be localized.  It is not steganography because it
>> does not depend on another information to hide the original
>> information, while it can use another information such as an image,
>> if so desired. 
>
>Sounds like many of the same claims as Ron Rivest's chaffing:
>http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~rivest/chaffing.txt
>

Rivest's system depends on another information (chaff) to hide the
information. Hence, it is steganography, even if the chaff is derived
from the wheat by bit-reversal because you *still* have the
*different* SN and signature for each chaff (which represent
different information contributions)

It's perhaps unfortunate that existing nomenclature is not followed ;-)
but the main merit of Rivest's system is not cryptographic -- it is
conceptual IMO, especially as it regards certain privacy control
views, to demonstrate the *potential* futility of it.


>How does your system differ?

First,the basic characteristic of a quantum system is NOT to have
localized entities -- the entities are characterized by wave
functions and there are many examples of non-local interactions in
QM. 

The system I proposed is *essentially* a quantum system. The
information is fully delocalized -- which means you won't (for
example) be able to pair the wheat and the chaff because you can't
see the wheat and the chaff does not exist!

;-) I would say you can't *see* the difference, then...because
neither part exists in Holocomm.

Further, the Holocomm system cannot be described by assigning bits as
the result of functions because -- and this is extremely important --
each plain text message bit is quantum delocalized over the *entire*
Holocomm message. And, by that, I don't mean that you don't know
where it is... I mean that it can be anywhere.

This is fundamentally different from any encryption or steganographic
system. This is a basic quantum property. If you take an electron,
you can't localized it -- the electron can effectively be anywhere.

Note: This means that, contrary to what might be understood, the
bit's probability function is NOT the probability to find the bit at
a point, but in a region. In fact the bit is quantum mechanically
delocalized and it has no sense to talk about finding the bit in one
position of the message. 


Cheers,

Ed

______________________________________________________________________
Dr.rer.nat. E. Gerck                     egerck@novaware.cps.softex.br
http://novaware.cps.softex.br
    --- Meta-Certificate Group member, http://www.mcg.org.br ---
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