Calculator hackers crack OS signing key, opening a closed platform • Hacker News Board

Re: Calculator hackers crack OS signing key, opening a closed platform

#41

Post by kragen » Mon, Aug 17, 2009, 11:59 PM UTC

ephermata wrote: post #19

jacquesm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not trying to piss of anybody (wow, you're touchy). I just think that you're putting the bar for immortality a little low here. Brute forcing a key is not exactly rocket science. Congratulations though :) edit: smiley duly noted. edit2: now if only the downmods would grow a sense of humor too :)

Running the general number field sieve is not exactly brute forcing. IMHO, understanding and tuning an algorithm as complicated as the GNFS is pretty close to rocket science. Not as close as actually inventing it or writing the code yourself, but this is more than just writing a short program to try all combinations.

He didn't implement the GNFS; he used GGNFS and MSieve.

Re: Calculator hackers crack OS signing key, opening a closed platform

#42

Post by kragen » Tue, Aug 18, 2009, 12:03 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #20

ephermata wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Running the general number field sieve is not exactly brute forcing. IMHO, understanding and tuning an algorithm as complicated as the GNFS is pretty close to rocket science. Not as close as actually inventing it or writing the code yourself, but this is more than just writing a short program to try all combinations.

Understanding and tuning an algorithm once somebody has devised it may be complicated, but coming up with the method in the first place is where the real work lies. Anybody can do cool stuff with the jpeg library for instance, but the first guy to take DCTs and apply them to image compression was the real hero. Unfortunately it is very rare to see the people that come up with an algorithm (if it isn't named after the…

Hurley and Chen are YouTube founders. Tom Lane organized the Independent JPEG Group, which isn't the group that designed JPEG (that group is called "JPEG") but rather an author of some important open-source JPEG software. What's the relationship?

Re: Calculator hackers crack OS signing key, opening a closed platform

#43

Post by kragen » Tue, Aug 18, 2009, 12:05 AM UTC

srt19170 wrote: post #40

Isn't this at least technically illegal? (DCMA)

You mean DMCA, and IANAL but probably not. The calculator's OS may be a copyrighted work, but the calculator itself is not.

Re: Calculator hackers crack OS signing key, opening a closed platform

#44

Post by ams6110 » Wed, Aug 19, 2009, 1:54 AM UTC

I guess I have a little taste of what the guys who went thorough school using slide rules felt like when calculators that could do trig functions came out.

I went through high school trig, calculus, and undergraduate college math classes with nothing more than a standard 10-digit "scientific" calculator. Graphs? You plotted those with a pencil.