Introduction The very first software algorithm to generate random numbers, was supposedly written in 1946 by John von Neumann, and is called the Middle Square Method, and it's crazy simple. Enough so, you could execute it with a pencil, paper, and basic calculator. In this post, I'm going to cover the method, it's drawbacks, and […]
I've been auditing a lot of JavaScript source code lately, and a common problem I'm seeing when generating random numbers is using the naive "multiply-and-floor" method. Because the "Math.random()" function call returns a number between 0 and 1, not including 1 itself, then developers think that the "best practice" for generating a random number is […]
Introduction I'd like to demonstrate why I think using sha256crypt or sha512crypt on current GNU/Linux operating systems is dangerous, and why I think the developers of GLIBC should move to scrypt or Argon2, or at least bcrypt or PBKDF2. History and md5crypt In 1994, Poul-Henning Kamp (PHK) added md5crypt to FreeBSD to address the weaknesses […]
A couple weeks ago, I purchased a lava lamp for $5 at a thrift store. It was in brand spanking new condition, and worked like a charm. The only thing going through my head at the time? I can't wait to point my webcam at it, and start generating some random numbers! Okay, well that, […]
I've been on IRC for a long time. Not as long as some, granted, but likely longer than most. I've had my hand in a number of IRC clients, mostly terminal-based. Yup, I was (shortly) using the ircII client, then (also shortly) BitchX. Then I found irssi, and stuck with that for a long time. […]
One thing that bothers me about OpenSSL is the lack of commandline support for AEAD ciphers, specifically AES in CCM and GCM block modes. Why does this matter? Suppose you want to save an encrypted file to disk, without GnuPG, because you don't want to get into key management. Further, suppose you want to send […]
I can't imagine there are a lot of uses for using digest algorithms in spreadsheets, but I came up with one, and I really wished I had access to them. Seeing as though most spreadsheet applications don't ship one, I figured I would create my own. Mostly, I use Google for my document processing and […]
You may have noticed some tweets from me that look.... strange. Probably something like these: UNYEf FXgOZ ILokj nIbFM qIlTr BRwQX iQciZ OtVhi GbUzj IGMVC SrOix sXHRZ TCtfJ #talon #cardciphers — Aaron Toponce (@AaronToponce) February 17, 2016 1455741420: 198027fd95bb881b223161d0df1b325fea7dab7f #ripemd160 #unix #epoch — Aaron Toponce (@AaronToponce) February 17, 2016 First, let me provide some background. […]
File this under the "I'm bored and have nothing better to do" category. While coming into work this morning, I was curious if I could use my monitors as a cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generator (CSPRNG). I don't know what use this would have, if any, as your GNU/Linux operating system already ships a CSPRNG […]
Background I've been a long-time KeepassX user, and to be honest, I don't see that changing any time soon. I currently have my password database on an SSH-accessible server, of which I use kpcli as the main client for accessing the db. I use Keepass2Android with SFTP on my phone to get read-only access to […]
No doubt, some people use password generators- not many, but some. Unfortunately, this means relying on 3rd party utilities, where the source code may not always be available. Personally, I would rather be in full control of the entire generation stack. I know how to make sure plenty of entropy is available in the generation, […]
Lately, I have been studying pseudorandom number generators (PRNGs, also called "deterministic random bit generators", or DRBGs). I've been developing cryptographically secure PRNGs (CSPRNGs), and you can see my progress on Github at https://github.com/atoponce/csprng. This project is for nothing more than for me to somewhat get a feeling for new languages, while also learning a […]
While writing a shell script the other day, I was redirecting some output to /dev/null, as normal, when something dawned on me. Why don't I redirect my output to /dev/random instead? After all, both Linux random devices are writable by everyone on the system: $ ls -l /dev/*random crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 1, 8 Nov […]
Recently, Apple released the ability for iPhone 5c and newer hardware to create a spoofed software MAC address for 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz wireless access points. The MAC address is locally administered, and a unicast address. This has sparked a small discussion in various forums about how to generate valid locally administered unicast MAC […]
Back in October 2012, I announced hundun.ae7.st. It's an "entropy server" that delivers encrypted random bits that are indistinguishable from true random, directly to your GNU/Linux input entropy pool. Per the Linux CSPRNG source code, the bits in the input entropy pool are then cryptographically hashed with SHA1 before sending the bits to the blocking […]