Unbreakable crypto: Store a 30-character password in your subconscious memory
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Re: Unbreakable crypto: Store a 30-character password in your subconscious memory
#2This is pretty awesome, but the following is noteworthy:
> creates a random sequence of 30 letters chosen from S, D, F, J, K, and L, with no repeating characters. This equates to around 38 bits of entropy
Which is not so bad for certain applications, but certainly isn't the 180+ bits you'd have in a true random 30 character password.
I wonder what applications they have in mind where this password system could be used.
Re: Unbreakable crypto: Store a 30-character password in your subconscious memory
#3> If a judge or policeman orders you to hand over your password, you can plausibly say that you don’t actually know it
Surely for this system to help in allowing you to plausibly say that, you'd have to reference this system (or equivalent) and demonstrate that it is indeed used for the authentication the police want access to. And in that case, surely the police could just say "in that case, please authenticate for us"?
Re: Unbreakable crypto: Store a 30-character password in your subconscious memory
#4This is interesting in regards of the brain, but not so much when it comes to waterboarding cryptoanalysis... I mean, instead of asking for the password, they'd ask you to play the game: same difference, right? Or am I missing something?
Re: Unbreakable crypto: Store a 30-character password in your subconscious memory
#5Obligatory xkcd: http://xkcd.com/538/
Only this time you'll have to log-in/decrypt on the spot rather than cough up your password.
Re: Unbreakable crypto: Store a 30-character password in your subconscious memory
#6Quite the login method:
1) Tell me who you are, so I can load up your secret 30 character "password" from some database (the fact that this needs to be stored in a retrievable way makes this entire system insecure)
2) Here's one random sequence of 30 characters. Look at it for a little bit, ok now try to reproduce it from memory.
3) Repeat several times (not stated how many).
4) One of those attempts was your specific password, let me check to see if you did significantly better at it than the other (random) ones.
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EDIT: Upon re-read, it sounds like 2-4 are a bit different:
2) Play a long sequence of characters "Guitar-Hero" style. The computer will "slip-in" the true password and watch to see if you do better on that section.
Still storing the password in the clear and still susceptible to being watched several times and finding the "common" sequence.
Re: Unbreakable crypto: Store a 30-character password in your subconscious memory
#7This is interesting in regards of the brain, but not so much when it comes to waterboarding cryptoanalysis... I mean, instead of asking for the password, they'd ask you to play the game: same difference, right? Or am I missing something?
It analyzes the performance of your sequence compared to the benchmark random sequences. It's no longer a black-and-white comparison in cryptography.
Re: Unbreakable crypto: Store a 30-character password in your subconscious memory
#8Beside the title being misleading (it's a 30-symbol password, not 30-character, as "character" implies printable ASCII to most people), the math doesn't quite make sense:
Before running, the game creates a random sequence of 30 letters chosen from S, D, F, J, K, and L, with no repeating characters. This equates to around 38 bits of entropy
So that's 6 choices for the first character, and 5 choices for each of the next 29 gives us log2(6*5^29) =~ 70 bits of entropy. Does anyone know where this 38 bit figure came from?
Re: Unbreakable crypto: Store a 30-character password in your subconscious memory
#9> If a judge or policeman orders you to hand over your password, you can plausibly say that you don’t actually know it Surely for this system to help in allowing you to plausibly say that, you'd have to reference this system (or equivalent) and demonstrate that it is indeed used for the authentication the police want access to. And in that case, surely the police could just say "in that case, please authenticate for…
Hopefully stress means that you won't be able to do it properly anyway, which means coercion is useless.
The real problem is the device stores the password, so the real defence is the tamperproof-ness of the device, not whether you can be tricked or coerced into outputting the sequence.
Re: Unbreakable crypto: Store a 30-character password in your subconscious memory
#10This is interesting in regards of the brain, but not so much when it comes to waterboarding cryptoanalysis... I mean, instead of asking for the password, they'd ask you to play the game: same difference, right? Or am I missing something?
It analyzes the performance of your sequence compared to the benchmark random sequences. It's no longer a black-and-white comparison in cryptography.
So? That doesn't have anything to do with what I just said/asked.