On 30/06/2010, at 9:34 AM, Nicholas Jefferson wrote: >> I'd be even more interested if you talked about cryptanalysis techniques. :-) > In theory or in practice? [1] > [1] http://xkcd.com/538/
Heh... hadn't seen that one. Very true. I always liked the 2000AD comic where bands of muggers would kill people and chop off their hands and pull out their eyes to access the super-secure fingerprint/retina scanners on MegaCityOne ATMs. Surprisingly, I've got a remarkably legitimate need for cryptanalysis. A number of years ago, a good friend of mine died. He had been keeping a journal, which he had encrypted, because he had lots of damning things to say about everyone he knew. They weren't conspiratorial, just very personal comments, I believe. Anyway, he said to one of his friends: "When I'm dead, you should publish my diary. It'll be a hoot!" Anyway, he died quite suddenly, and left no-one with the password. He claimed we should all be able to figure out the password, anyway. Well, we couldn't. He was using some old crypto tool on Mac OS 9, whose only interface is this crappy little GUI. I tried using AppleScript to script a dictionary attack, but it was very brittle, and at any rate, I don't have a working OS 9 machine left any more. It's quite likely that the encryption scheme is quite weak, and may be brute-force crackable in reasonable time... but I know bugger-all about the entire subject. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby or Rails Oceania" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rails-oceania?hl=en.
