A one-time pad is a cryptographically secure method of encrypting data. In a one-time pad, the key is chosen to have the same length as the message, i.e. it does not repeat like in a [[Vignere Cipher]], for example. ![[one-time_pad.excalidraw.light.svg]] Since the [[Encryption Key|key]] is the same length as the message, the [[Encryption|encryption]] cannot be broken. There is no starting point for a statistical analysis of the message, etc. However, using *one-time pads* for encryption is rather resource intensive: For each message, we first have to share a message of the size of the message that we would like to share. And key sharing is usually much slower than encryption and decryption. In practice, one-time pads are not commonly used. They serve rather as an ideal reference for maximal security. >[!read]- Further Reading >- [[Encryption]] >- [[Encryption Key]] >[!ref]- References