Non-Degenerate One-Time Pad and the integrity of perfectly secret messages

Abstract: We present a new construction of a One Time Pad (OTP) with inherent diffusive properties and a redundancy injection mechanism that benefits from them. The construction is based on interpreting the plaintext and key as members of a permutation group in the Lehmer code representation after conversion to factoradic. The so constructed OTP translates any perturbation of the ciphertext to an unpredictable, metrically large random perturbation of the plaintext. This allows us to provide unconditional integrity assurance without extra key material. The redundancy is injected using Foata's "pun": the reading of the one-line representation as the cyclic one; we call this Pseudo Foata Injection. We obtain algorithms of quadratic complexity that implement both mechanisms.