Systems and methods using one time pads during the exchange of cryptographic material
A solution that enables the exchange of information in a secure manner over an insecure text messaging infrastructure provides part of the exchange as cryptographic material to be used to secure subsequent communications. The exchange of the cryptographic material is protected from malicious and nefarious parties. Systems and methods for the exchange of cryptographic material enable the parties involved in the exchange to have confidence that the material received was communicated from the originating party. Once the cryptographic material is successfully exchanged between cooperating peers, it can be used by smartphones, tablets, feature phones, or special purpose machine to machine devices for private communications, such as command and control, location services, etc. over insecure voice or data communication paths, such as SMS.
1. A method of establishing and conducting secure short message communications between plural peer devices, comprising:
(a) transmitting cryptographic information to a peer device over an electronic connection;
(b) securely providing, to each of the plural peer devices, a one time pad using a communication that is out of band with respect to the electronic connection including not conveying the one time pad over the electronic connection but instead using a different communications path that prevents interception of the one time pad by eavesdroppers on the electronic connection, the one time pad comprising a one time passcode or passphrase for input into each of the plural peer devices;
(c) using the one time pad to authenticate the transmitted cryptographic information and/or as a seed to cipher the cryptographic information for transmission;
(d) generating a shared secret from the cryptographic information; and
(e) using the shared secret to securely protect short messages for exchange between the plural peer devices over the same or different electronic connection.
2. The method of claim 1 wherein the short messages comprise SMS messages.