Well, even the FBI seem to be having problems with proper security: http://g1.globo.com/English/noticia/2010/06/not-even-fbi -can-de-crypt-files-daniel-dantas.html
... but there's a lot of work done on speeding up brute-force wifi cracking with rainbow tables; maybe it'd help? http://www.renderlab.net/projects/WPA-tables/ - Korny (who coincidentally saw these links elsewhere in the last couple of weeks - not a security geek myself! ) On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 10:24 AM, David Parry <[email protected]>wrote: > 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]<rails-oceania%[email protected]> > . > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/rails-oceania?hl=en. > > -- Kornelis Sietsma korny at my surname dot com kornys on twitter/fb/gtalk/gwave www.sietsma.com/korny "Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part that wonders what the part that isn't thinking isn't thinking of" -- 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.
