
Classical cryptosystems 65
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THISNATIONUNDERGODSHALLHAVEANEWBIRTHOFFREEDOMANDTHAT
GOVERNMENTOFTHEPEOPLEBYTHEPEOPLEFORTHEPEOPLESHALLNOT
PERISHFROMTHEEARTH’
—it’s the famous Gettys burg Address of Abraham Linco ln.
A known-plaintext attack is trivial, since given plaintext a nd corresponding
ciphertext the keyword can be found immediately.
3.6 The one-time pad
This is the only unbreakable cryptosystem in existence. It can be consid-
ered as a variation of the Vigen`ere cipher, where the keyword is as long as
the plaintext. If the keyword is random, then there is no possible correspon-
dence between plaintext and ciphertext, making cryptanalysis impossible. ...