Uplink is coming to life!

scope

Posted on SlashDot: "The National Security Agency has purchased a license for Certicom Corp.'s elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) system, and plans to make the technology a standard means of securing classified communications."
(url="http://"http://www.eweek.com/print_article/0,3048,a=110561,00.asp")http://www.eweek.com...a=110561,00.asp(/url)

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-scope
Carpe Aptenodytes! (Seize the Penguins!)
I feel like a genocidal maniac when emacs asks me if I want to kill 10789 characters.
Calculating in binary code is as easy as 01,10,11

mrxak

Neat. I wouldn't be too surprised if the NSA has something better already though. This is probably just for federal contractors and lower-end systems like they say.

(This message has been edited by mrxak (edited 10-27-2003).)

TomRix

Unlike Uplink, though, cryptography is pretty secure in theory; no known algorithm can crack the cryptography system in any reasonable amount of time.
And when processors get fast enough to get past something like this, it's a simple matter to exponentially increase a cryptography scheme's complexity without a real slowdown on a non-cracking receiver.
But that doesn't seem to keep people from trying to figure out the proverbial back door.

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Getting on everybody's nerves since 1999.

Rick_Hardslab

The backdoor is and always has been at the ends.

If someone says

"the monkey is eating mistletoe on gravel in a chocolate coffin"

absolutely noone anywhere knows what that means (it dosent mean anything) Codes can be 100% uncrackable, but the ends arent. Someone somewhere left the preverbial cypher sheet laying around and you get that you cracked the code.

The same is true in computers. The ends are always the weak point, and usually they are very weak. People get a huge false sense of security when they hear about how secure their encryption is (it would take all the computers on earth 80,000 years to crack or whatever) that they dont have the proper security where it really matters.

Hacking is not tools like bruteforcers wardialers and decyphers, its research. dumpster diving, information trading, and exploiting the stupid peons who answer the phones.

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(url="http://"http://www.freewebs.com/hardslab/cheat2.hqx")Cheat 2(/url)
Cheat in almost any mac game. Even Nova... Even UPLINK.

TomRix

//mmmmm... chocolate coffin...

Yep, that's the general idea. As another aside, about how many 23-or-26 or so digit prime numbers are there? If there are as few as I possibly erroneously think, that would be one way to work around the 80000 years, but that's probably been tried. The prime number set is fortunately an infinite one, though. But everyone knows THAT.

I read about how things like the hacker footwork goes in a book way back when, called "The Cuckoo's Egg" + a subtitle; I thought it was nice. The writer even prefers Mac over Windows (but UNIX over Mac).

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Getting on everybody's nerves since 1999.

Morpheus

Maybe everyone that's using Uplink is really working for a company and hacking other computers. Maybe this is all real life and we've all just committed about 30 different computer crimes!!! What will my mother say?!?!?!

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The End is the Beginning is the End!

mrxak

Quote

Originally posted by Morpheus:
**Maybe everyone that's using Uplink is really working for a company and hacking other computers. Maybe this is all real life and we've all just committed about 30 different computer crimes!!! What will my mother say?!?!?!

**

Well, assuming that you are good at the game, she may never find out :).

Maniak

Good joke. But actually, if Uplink were real, I'd be in jail. (I got caught once on a bank hack.) To elaborate on this, one of Panther's new features is an encryption that would take a supercomputer about 147 trillion years to crack. The universe has only been in existence for about 20 billion years, to clear that up.

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Maniak hacks like
crazy!

mrxak

Quote

Originally posted by Maniak:
**Good joke. But actually, if Uplink were real, I'd be in jail. (I got caught once on a bank hack.) To elaborate on this, one of Panther's new features is an encryption that would take a supercomputer about 147 trillion years to crack. The universe has only been in existence for about 20 billion years, to clear that up.:D

**

You didn't strap dynamite to your computer and blow it up when the Feds came to your door? Shame on you.

"Oh no sir, I have never hacked anything in my life. Are you sure you have the right house? What? That smoking rubble on my desk? No, that was never a computer..."

Good times :).

Maniak

Actually, the reason I didn't blow up my computer was that I couldn't. I did that while I was unregistered, so I was using that Kronos Corp Gateway. I had it outfitted with a motion sensor, but not a nuke. But you get the idea.

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Maniak hacks like
crazy!

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Uplink is coming to life!