Enterprise-level tech support already scales with N^2, as does finance and legal paperwork.kzt wrote:No, there are huge practical issues with OTP beyond the size of the keys and the need to exchange them securely. Not to underestimate that, as it's a problem that scales at N squared. Things like maintaining sync, error correction, spoofing and anti-spoofing. For example, if I can get you to use a OTP thinking you are talking to someone else, you'll have a really hard time talking to them when they send you a message using the OTP you burned.
Perfect hashing and parity bits solve error correction. With probability one minus epsilon, sure, but that was already the case.
Spoofing is handled with public-key cryptography. You just negotiate how you're going to use the OTP in the same way that you'd negotiate how to use some symmetric-key algorithm. I guess that we're already assuming that public-key stuff doesn't exist, though, so you've got me there.
Eh, whatever. I think they've already decided to go with a symmetric-key algorithm with physical key exchange and a feasible attack in predictable linear time. From a game mechanical perspective, they're right to do so; as Frank laid out in the OP, realistic crypto is extremely un-fun because it actually works. Our best bet at this point is to bullshit up something to explain that, same as it was when this topic came up for FTCPFHB.