Because maybe you shouldn't trust anyone else to create it for you.
Maybe because you are an ignoramus without a clue?
Everyone here should be well aware that any publicly created crypto has been more than likely influenced by the NSA or other groups (as has already been exposed by Wikileaks and others).
False. Wrong generalization using the word "any". Demonstrate to me how Blowfish has been influenced by the NSA.
So I prefer that we discuss ways of creating new crypto
Certainly. Go ahead and discuss. Maybe you'll learn something. Just don't ask others to rely on any cyphers you have created.
rather than saying "we can't discuss that as we are not qualified".
Some of us are more qualified than others. Many of us are more qualified than you. But there is nothing wrong in discussing things.
So let's start with a very simple but important thing - the "one time pad".
OK. Let's. As you undoubtedly know, it is unbreakable in theory. Explain to us why it is totally unusable in practice. Emphasize the various possible protocol pitfalls. Describe the key exchange problem.
It is actually the best method of encryption in existence
No, it is not. It is actually one of the worst encryption methods in existence. It is just the most resistant one to cryptanalysis.
it only relies upon the two sides having a shared secret at one point in time.
Wrong. It relies on the two sides having a key as long as the total length of their communication (over all the time they will be communicating), which key is totally, unpredictably, physically random. How would the sides know beforehand how long their communication would be? And, if they don't, how would they exchange a key with such a length? And, if they can do that in a secure way, why not exchange the message itself?
Some practical implementations have involved giving special "pads" (notebooks) with the key to the soldiers during WWII, although I have no information regarding how the key was created. More contemporary example includes generating the keys from the noise of radioactive decay (the closest thing to random we have in nature), recording it on CD-ROMs and delivering them to the embassies with diplomatic mail. Of course, this relies that the key will not be intercepted and that it will be indeed random, which we cannot theoretically guarantee.
But assuming we are happy that we have solved the issue of exchanging a key (whether via GPG or an in person meeting) then we can start to build a secure method to exchange messages without needing to use any 3rd party software.
At this point you have already trusted 3rd-party software to generate the keys and perform key exchange. Why not also trust it with the encryption? And, if it is untrustworthy to begin with, your communication is already compromised (the attacker has the key), no matter what software you use for encryption.
Many have tried to point out that I should be incompetent to create a brainwallet
From what you have demonstrated so far, your incompetence in cryptology is orders of magnitude larger.
If SHA256 is not secure then Bitcoin should have already been destroyed
Wrong conclusion. Revealing that SHA-256 is not secure might cost more than one is able to gain by "breaking" Bitcoin.
(and that is the OTP method that I use)
You use SHA-256 to generate the key and call this a "one time pad"? Either I did not understand what you wrote, or you are a complete moron.
SHA256 is actually used by Linux systems for /var/random when physical random data is not available - so unless you are going to suggest that the Linux kernel devs are idiots then perhaps you can stop comparing me to some newbies
/var/random is not
mathemathically random. The output is hashed in an attempt to increase randomness - because this is the best we can do. The result is still not theoretically random - we just hope that it is random
enough.
if I were the NSA and I wanted to stop anyone questioning about crypto that is exactly the approach I think I'd use also
Nobody is stopping anyone from "questioning about crypto". We are just trying to stop ignorant morons from making idiotic
statements about crypto that we would have to waste time debunking, like I am doing right now. If you want to learn and have legitimate questions - ask away. If you are going to bombard us with silly ideas and conspiracy theories exposing you ignorance - fuck off.
Perhaps the cypherfunks were too naive themselves - they got infiltrated by NSA and didn't even realise it
Uh-huh, and you genius were able to figure it our and are in a position to reveal it to the world. /facepalm
For example, cpercival does not use XTS or other block modes for Tarsnap cloud storage and for good reason, because there are all sorts of attacks that can be done to XTS once it is freed from the physical confines of disk geometry.
Actually, XTS sucks even for physical disks; it is just the best we can do there, since we are limited by the disk geometry. A disk sector of 512 bytes still has to be encrypted into 512 bytes - you don't have additional space for initialization vectors and authentication codes and checksums. (And, no, you can't rely on compression shrinking the size of the stuff you are going to encrypt.)
The NSA more likely than not, has had hardly if any any influence on crypto.
The NSA has had
huge influence on crypto. They took IBM's Lucifer and changed it into DES, in practice strengthening it against an attack that wasn't known to the civilian sector at the time. They have also weakened a random number generator suggested by NIST - this is documented fact. They have also proposed particular elliptic curves suggested by NIST, except that now nobody knows the reason why - was it in order to strengthen or to weaken the encryption?
Interesting - not a single question about any algo I have (supposedly) written but instead a lot of lecturing
This is because the ignorance you have demonstrated so far in cryptology makes us totally uninterested in your algorithm.
For all you armchair critics know I have simply put a standard OpenSSL call in a function wrapper!
And you trust OpenSSL exactly why? And how do you know that you haven't introduced any weaknesses in your wrapper?
As for the NSA it is not paranoia but actual known issues made public by Wikileaks that I am referring to.
OK, explain us exactly what the NSA did, according to Wikileaks. (Given that you got even the source of the information wrong, I am willing to bet that you don't know what the information is, either, let alone understand its implications.)
