One of academia's leading cryptanalysts has rated a new security format as " absolutely unbreakable".

Permanent Privacy, which has been verified by Peter Schweitzer at Harvard, is offering $1m to anyone who can crack the encryption.

The platform is based on AES encryption, but has an extra layer of security which its developers claim makes it impregnable.

Peter White, managing director of Permanent Privacy, said: "The world of cryptography shuns and disparages outsiders, but Permanent Privacy is the real thing.

"You can now send emails and store data with 100 per cent security. Even the Pentagon cannot read your secrets if they do not have the keys."

Permanent Privacy explained that the inspiration came from the idea of encrypting a piece of plain text that was unintelligible gibberish.

"If the plain text is gibberish and has no meaning, there is no understandable form or relationship between the plain text and the cyphertext," the company said.

"So when you launch an attack on the cyphertext, and try all combinations of the key(s) in order to decrypt it, the plain text will certainly appear.

"The problem is that you will never know which of the perhaps billions of combinations is the plain text as you have no way to judge this."

As a result, the security firm is offering the $1m prize to anyone who can crack its offering.