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>Sneakers ridiculously featured a universal key that can break all crypto That's not ridiculous at all: go back and re-watch the film. If the MacGuffin did wha

>Sneakers ridiculously featured a universal key that can break all crypto That's not ridiculous at all: go back and re-watch the film. If the MacGuffin did what the film said it did, it would effectively act as a universal key.

wslh 10y ago
And they were assessed by a top cryptographer: Leonard Adleman (the "A" in RSA) https://www.usc.edu/dept/molecular-science/fm-sneakers.htm https://www.usc.edu/dept/molecular-science/fm-sneakers.htm
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  I knew it was one of them. For some reason I thought it was Rivest and not Adleman.
svachalek 10y ago
Yeah I was wondering if I remembered it wrong. I thought what they figured out was an efficient algorithm for factoring primes, which is effectively a universal key. AFAIK Shor's algorithm is pretty much just that, and handicapped solely by the lack of a [known] sufficiently-sized quantum computer to run it on.
- logfromblammo 10y ago
  It was a combination of an algorithmic improvement and ASIC hardware, to attack and recover encryption keys from vulnerable schemes in minutes, rather than billions of years. The algorithm might have also required a hardware instruction not typically provided by commercially available chips. As a MacGuffin, it is still entirely plausible. But the actual use of any such magic box would never be visually exciting enough for Hollywood. "Ok, so I ssh in to the box, feed it the hash, let it run for 450 hours, and then we get the result and spend Satoshi's Bitcoins into accounts we control." "Does anything blow up?" "No." "Blinky lights at FBI headquarters?" "No." "Car chases?" "No." "Break in to a secured building?" "No." "So who's going to watch this movie?" "How about we just get some laser pointers and some cats while we wait?"
atmosx 10y ago
Indeed 'Sneakers' is a good hacker movie by all means. It even give us a Perl script at some point AFAIK. There is another movie called "Travelling Salesman" where a few mathematicians solve P vs NP and explain the possible implications to a federal agent who wants to exploit their breakthroughs. ps. Awesome script to play hacker while people is looking at your shell https://github.com/bartobri/no-more-secrets https://github.com/bartobri/no-more-secrets
strictnein 10y ago
Yeah that movie holds up quite well.

wslh 10y ago

And they were assessed by a top cryptographer: Leonard Adleman (the "A" in RSA) https://www.usc.edu/dept/molecular-science/fm-sneakers.htm https://www.usc.edu/dept/molecular-science/fm-sneakers.htm

qwertyuiop924 10y ago
I knew it was one of them. For some reason I thought it was Rivest and not Adleman.

svachalek 10y ago

Yeah I was wondering if I remembered it wrong. I thought what they figured out was an efficient algorithm for factoring primes, which is effectively a universal key. AFAIK Shor's algorithm is pretty much just that, and handicapped solely by the lack of a [known] sufficiently-sized quantum computer to run it on.

logfromblammo 10y ago
It was a combination of an algorithmic improvement and ASIC hardware, to attack and recover encryption keys from vulnerable schemes in minutes, rather than billions of years. The algorithm might have also required a hardware instruction not typically provided by commercially available chips. As a MacGuffin, it is still entirely plausible. But the actual use of any such magic box would never be visually exciting enough for Hollywood. "Ok, so I ssh in to the box, feed it the hash, let it run for 450 hours, and then we get the result and spend Satoshi's Bitcoins into accounts we control." "Does anything blow up?" "No." "Blinky lights at FBI headquarters?" "No." "Car chases?" "No." "Break in to a secured building?" "No." "So who's going to watch this movie?" "How about we just get some laser pointers and some cats while we wait?"

atmosx 10y ago

Indeed 'Sneakers' is a good hacker movie by all means. It even give us a Perl script at some point AFAIK. There is another movie called "Travelling Salesman" where a few mathematicians solve P vs NP and explain the possible implications to a federal agent who wants to exploit their breakthroughs. ps. Awesome script to play hacker while people is looking at your shell https://github.com/bartobri/no-more-secrets https://github.com/bartobri/no-more-secrets

strictnein 10y ago

Yeah that movie holds up quite well.