Posted on 08/21/2013 8:50:45 PM PDT by Errant
The Internet, and many forms of online commerce and communication that depend on it, may be on the brink of a "cryptopalypse" resulting from the collapse of decades-old methods of shared encryption.
The result would be "almost total failure of trust in the Internet," said four researchers who gave a presentation at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas earlier this month.
"We need to move to stronger cryptosystems that leverage more-difficult mathematical problems," the presenters said.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Remember when most websites were gray with very few pictures?
It was almost like using BBS’s sometimes
Yep! Since you mentioned BBS’s, expect they may be making a comeback! lol
It is unclear how this situation came to be. The usual obvious explanations (unencrypted hotspots and the like) don't apply, and the password should be hashed at the other end. Linux on this end, properly maintained, and no indication of anything amiss. There is nothing particularly of interest in my boring gmail, so it is puzzling that anyone would go to the trouble of computing a hash match.
Mention BBS today and most people would say, "Huh, Whut?"
LOL, for sure... I used to play around with them some, way back when.
A BBS could be more secure. It would be interesting for a local group to try that idea out.
Someone may have gotten your info from another less secure site and just seeing if you had a gmail account using the same username/password?
Would be good for backup, incase TPTB shut down the net. Could also use ham equipment to access it?
That’s the puzzling thing — did not use the same password on any but what should be the most secure sites (like banks — that’s what scared me). Have different passwords now.
No trouble. Rainbow tables. Precomputed values that match the md5 hash of your passwd. Stored “in the cloud”.
That's a pain in the butt to do. I pretty much have different ones except for a few secure sites. I don't use gmail or yahoo anymore. I have my own email accounts through my old business domains - nothing encrypted though.
I was playing around with tormail in anticipation of what's coming with all the spying going on, but that got shut down.
Startpage is suppose to begin a secured, paid email service called Startmail in 2014.
hacking is a scattered approach, they have likely programmed a computer to hack hundreds or thousands of emails at a time
I was tinkering with the idea of using shortwave radio to broadcast “news” and data to computers. I doubt shortwave is clear enough for that but it could be something to experiment with.
Very true. I was just getting into computers when the BBS thing was dying out. I remember a free magazine about computers here locally that had lists of BBS’ we could access.
I have some ideas using encrypted P2P networking along those lines. Different wavelength though. ;)
Yep, I picked up a U.S. Robotics 56K USB (no serial ports on PC’s these days) modem on sale just in case we are forced to return to BBS days! Next step HAM equipment.
Betcha somewhere there be a BBS running. Might have to dig out one of my old modems and search the net. lol
Radio Free America could be sending out hourly or daily data packets with the news that the government wants suppressed. Imagine getting a daily PDF “newspaper” via shortwave reception.
Do you think this kind of thing might be able to work?
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