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Comment Re:It's convenience and security. (Score 1) 835

Why are we even signing things anymore, when a digital signature would be a lot more secure and convenient?

Reality check: Could your mom digitally sign something today? Didn't think so.
And why not? Because digital signatures are in reality neither secure nor convenient. They require a fully functioning PKI, which is hardly convenient. Seriously, has anyone ever actually created a functioning PKI that is actually secure and/or used in the real world? The closest thing would be the SSL infrastructure and the recent CA compromises show how secure that is.
I know of what I speak: I used to work for an actual licensed CA.

Comment SLL! HASH! ENCRYPTION! !!!1! (Score 0) 223

Oh. My. God.
If you do not know the difference between a hash algorithm and a cipher algorithm, then STEP AWAY FROM THE SECURITY!
DIY crypto is a good idea like DIY brain surgery is.
Rolling your own crypto system is like rolling your own mercenary army. It feels really awesome and at first it's all running around in the woods with your camo and guns and FUCK YEAH WE RULE. But then you meet reality and it's all OMFG WE GOT PWNED. and ALSO WE'RE DEAD

Comment Interesting, but easily defeated (Score 2) 204

I'm not saying the research is worthless, but their techniques are easily defeated.
It would be simple to write a program that would iteratively "fuzz" your message with typos, lowercase/uppercase toggling, etc. and check the result against their algorithm until the message could no longer be tied to you.
I'm sure someone could do it in 10 lines of Perl, or less.

Comment Oblig. HItchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Score 4, Insightful) 49

The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive--you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure, of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same program.

Comment Re:Who knew! (Score 4, Insightful) 156

Even one time pads are susceptible to brute force attacks.

Nope, absolutely incorrect. That's what makes one-time pads different. When the key length is the same as the plaintext length, it is possible have perfect security. Look up unicity distance.

If the original was normal human readable text it becomes immediately obvious when your brute force succeeds and a subsequent dictionary comparison of each word yields a hit.

But your brute force attack will yield every single possible plaintext (with the same length as the original plaintext). Which is the real one?

For example, if the ciphertext is BWIJAA, your brute force attack will get ATTACK for one key, and GOHOME for another. (And every other 6 character string.)

Comment Re:Infinite complexity? (Score 1) 830

The human brain is composed of one hundred billion or so neurons. Looks like it's pretty much finite to me. I have ten times as many bytes of information in my hard disk.

But a neuron is worth a lot more than a byte - it's more like a node. At least mine are - don't know about yours.

(But point taken about "infinite complexity".)

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