User talk:Ciphergoth/One-time pad
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In cryptography, the one-time pad (OTP) is an encryption algorithm which has been proven, from theoretical first principles, to be unbreakable when properly deployed. It was invented in 1917.
In the one-time pad the plaintext is combined with a random key or "pad" that is as long as the plaintext and used only once. The "pad" part of the name comes from early implementations of the key material as a pad of gummed paper (for easy concealment, the pad was often physically very small, e.g. ).