Introduction Recently, I've been studying Latin squares and their role in classical cryptography including the one-time pad. Latin squares are NxN squares where no element in a row is duplicated in that same row, and no element in a column is duplicated in that column. The popular Sudoku game is a puzzle that requires building […]
Introduction Lately, I've been interested in pulling up some classical modes of generating randomness. That is, rather than relying on a computer to generate my random numbers for me, which is all to common and easy these days, I wanted to go offline, and generate random numbers the classical way- coin flips, dice rolls, card […]
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 […]
Introduction For the past several months now, I have been auditing password generators for the web browser in Google Sheets. It started by looking for creative ideas I could borrow or extend upon for my online password generator. Sure enough, I found some, such as using mouse movements as a source of entropy to flashy […]
This is the first in a series of posts about password best practices. The series will cover best practices from a few different angles- the generator targeted at developers creating those generators, the end user (you, mom, dad, etc.) as you select passwords for accounts from those generators, and the service provider storing passwords in […]
Since the development of my passphrase and password generator, I started working toward improving the other online generators out there on the web. I created a Google Spreadsheet to work toward that goal, by doing reasonable audits to "rank" each generator, and see how they stacked up against the rest. Then, I started submitting patches […]
Just this morning, security researcher Troy Hunt released a ZIP containing 306 million passwords that he's collected over the years from his ';--have i been pwned? service. As an extension, he created a service to provide either a password or a SHA-1 hash to see if your password has been pwnd. In 2009, the social […]
TL;DR An Austrian casino company used a predictable pseudorandom number generator, rather than a cryptographically secure one, and people are taking advantage of it, and cashing out big. The Story Wired reported on an article about an amazing operation at beating electronic slot machines, by holding your phone to the slot machine screen for a […]
Troy Hunt, a well-respected security researcher, and public speaker, wrote a blog post recently about how adblockers are part of the bad experience of the web. His article is about a sponsorship banner he posts at the top of his site, just below the header. It's not flashy, intrusive, loud, obnoxious, or a security or […]
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, […]
Normally, I keep a sharp eye on all things cryptographic-related with the Linux kernel. However, in 4.2, I missed something fantastic: jitterentropy_rng.ko. This is a Linux kernel module that measures the jitter of the high resolution timing available in modern CPUs, and uses this jitter as a source of true randomness. In fact, using the […]
Yesterday, Google announced two new encrypted messaging apps called "Allo" and "Duo". There has been some talk about the security of Allo's end-to-end encryption and incognito mode. Most of it was speculation, until Thai Duong blogged about it. Well, it's time to see what he said, and see if Allo stands up to scrutiny. "Allo […]
One of the things that has always bothered me about the Chromium project (the project the Google Chrome browser is based on) is that passwords are encrypted, if and only if your operating system provides an authentication API through your account login. For example, on Windows, is is accomplished through the "CryptProtectData" function. This function […]
Yesterday, Opera announced that they are bundling a VPN with the latest release of their browser. This is what the release says: Why we are adding free VPN in Opera Bringing this important privacy improvement marks another step in building a browser that matches up to people’s expectations in 2016. When you think about it, […]