hashing
Hashes are a bit like fingerprints for data. A given hash uniquely represents a file, or any arbitrary collection of data. At least in theory. This is a 128-bit MD5 hash you're looking at above, so it can represent at most 2128 unique items, or 340 trillion trillion
security
Bruce Schneier is something of a legend in the computer security community. He's the author of the classic, oft-cited 1994 book Applied Cryptography, as well as several well-known cryptography algorithms. The cheeky Norris-esque design above is a reference to the actor names commonly used in examples of shared
security
The multi-platform password cracker Ophcrack is incredibly fast. How fast? It can crack the password "Fgpyyih804423" in 160 seconds. Most people would consider that password fairly secure. The Microsoft password strength checker rates it "strong". The Geekwisdom password strength meter rates it "mediocre". Why
security
Cory Doctorow recently linked [http://www.boingboing.net/2006/07/10/analogy_explains_str.html] to this fascinating email [http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200607/msg00058.html] from Jon Callas [http://www.merrymeet.com/jon/], the CTO of PGP corporation [http://www.pgp.com/library/ctocorner/index.html]. In
cartoons
I recently found a link to a series of Larry Gonick's mathematical cartoons that were originally published in Discover magazine: * Beauty and the Beasts (neural nets) * Prime Time (cryptography) * Proof Positive? (probabalistic proofs) * Lumps, with Mother Nature (chaotic mixing) * Speed (relativity) * The Solution (traveling salesman's problem)
security
I just posted a new article on CodeProject, .NET Encryption Simplified. In my spare time over the last 6 months, I’ve delved deeper and deeper into the System.Security.Cryptography classes. And you know what I learned? Cryptography is hard. Anyway, I now have a heavily documented wrapper class