[ARC5] Dead Pigeons, Secret Messages, and Random Numbers

[Leslie Smith]

Hello gents,
Geoff Linthorne, VK2GL, may be able to speak on this topic.
At one time (after end of WWII) he trained with RAF at Bletchley Park,
and until recently lectured (at a junior level) in codes and cyphers at
Williamtown RAAF base.

One common "one time" pad method used two books.  This is described in a
book, "The suitcase set".
The agent would visit a book-shop and select two copies of the same
book.
He took one copy and used it to encode the message, and the second copy
remained with the decoder (presumably in UK in this instance).   This
instance may refer to alternate type of "once-only" pad.

73
-- 
  Leslie Smith
  vk2bcu at operamail.com


On Tue, Nov 27, 2012, at 10:19, J. Forster wrote:
> This is a follow-up to the news story of the long-dead carrier pigeon
> found in a chimney in the UK with a 'secret'message attached.
> 
> News reports say that the message may never be decoded, because it was
> encrypted using a one-time pad.
> 
> Now the question: In WWII, how did they generate the random data to make
> one-time pads? And, how many distinct, different one-time pads were made?
> 
> If the message were now in machine readable form, it could be quickly
> tested against a library of different one-time pads, but that would have
> been next to impossible 70 years ago.
> 
> Best,
> 
> -John
> 
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> 
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