[0] http://www.cs.utsa.edu/~wagner/laws/pad.html
<strike>edit to clarify: "unbreakable" is the wrong word, since it could be brute-forced with enough time and energy, like any encryption method.</strike>
yes it is completely unbreakable.
An envelope key is a securely, randomly generated key used to encrypt the large payload. Then the envelope key (much smaller than the payload) can be encrypted using a one time pad.
The result is that the precious bits of encryption provided by the one time pad are used up at a predictable rate.
Guessing the envelope key is more probable than guessing the one time pad key, but that only breaks a single message's encryption.
Regardless, here's what I think are interesting areas in recent crypto:
- Performance improvements in fully homomorphic encryption, starting with Gentry's work in 2009.
- Practical applications of secure multiparty computation, e.g. Dyadic Security and Google's SMC work.
- Non-NIST standards with actual adoption like Curve25519 and Chacha20-Poly1305
- Functional Encryption: http://eprint.iacr.org/2010/543
- Post-quantum crypto like New Hope (https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/1092) and Supersingular Isogenies (http://eprint.iacr.org/2011/506)
- Candidate functions for Multilinear Maps, e.g. https://eprint.iacr.org/2012/610
- Hardware-based secure enclaves like SGX
But methods of gathering entropy can range from a microphone recording a city street to the classic keyboard/mouse.
Both are valid, but not as practical.
Personally I have the OneRNG, an open source usb-stick that gathers entropy by generating RF noise.
There are other devices like that out today.
[0]: https://z.cash/technology/zksnarks.html
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-interactive_zero-knowledge...
[2]: https://z.cash/
Check out the Open Quantum Systems implementation, they've got a suite incorporating a number of quantum resistant algorithms: https://github.com/open-quantum-safe/liboqs
They have the SIDH implementation you mentioned (https://github.com/open-quantum-safe/liboqs/blob/master/docs...), and a test harness for comparing performance.
http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/academic/cryptogr...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID-based_encryption
"Identity-based systems allow any party to generate a public key from a known identity value such as an ASCII string. A trusted third party, called the Private Key Generator (PKG), generates the corresponding private keys...."
I think it's innovative and a bit of "thinking outside the box". You do need to ultimately trust a 3rd party (same as in PKI or WOT I guess?).
There is a lot of interesting work in privacy preserving databases as well.
