Re: Johnny Mnemonic

From: ink (noway_at_nowhere.net)
Date: 10/31/03 

Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 15:39:37 +0100

"Tanu R." dropped into the real world with a crash and proclaimed...
>
> "G. Orme" <newsgroups@harmakhiss.org> wrote
>
> > I just read the story and screenplay, that was made into the well
> known
> > movie with Keanu Reeves. In the story Johnny takes 3 snapshots of a TV
> > signal each from 3 different channels and uses that as a key to encode
the
> > data he carries, 320 gig of it.
> > The same 3 snapshots are sent to the receiver separately for
> decryption
> > later. Is this a sensible idea, I assume it is something the author
> William
> > Gibson thought up.
>
> You forgot to tell to the experts just *how* those 3 snapshots are sent to
> the receiver ... they are the *key*!
>
> I hope the key was not sent unencrypted? If it was, it may be rather hard
> to find any sense in the idea...

The "scheme" used in the movie was a notoriously bad idea by
cryptographic standards. The three snapshots were printed and
were supposed to be carried by Johnny (who was also carrying
the encrypted data - in his head) and handed to the person
downloading the data from his head. Sort of sending the
unencrypted key along with the encrypted data in the same
stream... does not make much sense, but I still liked the
movie ;-)

Cheers,
ink

- "I'll do the time with a smile on my face
   thinking of her in that leather and lace."
(Ricky Martin)