Subj : Numbers stations
To   : Angus McLeod
From : Digital Man
Date : Wed Aug 17 2005 01:20 am

  Re: Numbers stations
  By: Angus McLeod to Digital Man on Tue Aug 16 2005 08:46 am

 >  > I suppose transmitting the OTP in a message on one day/time/freq and
 >  > transmitting the ciphertext message itself on another day/time/freq would
 >  > be too obvious. :-)
 > 
 > It relies on "Security By Obscurity".  The message is easy to decode, but
 > nobody knows how, because nobody knows which pair of day/time/freq to use.
 > 
 > SBO is frowned upon by the security 'experts' and I tend to agree.  But I
 > think it can't *hurt* to obscure things a bit.

Yeah, we usually use "Security by obscurity" (as a criticism) to refer to
encoding algorithms that are "secret" to achieve or enhance the security of
the scheme. But it's been proven that algorithms that are open to public 
scrutiny by experts provide more security, ultimately.

The "key" itself is always assumed to be "obscured" (i.e. secret), but that's
something else.

                                                  digital man

Snapple "Real Fact" #34:
If you keep a goldfish in a dark room it will eventually turn white.

.