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They're sufficiently unpredictable, especially the exact phrasing (and the sport scores), that they offer pretty good proof that the message was signed recently
by rcxdude 4y ago
They're sufficiently unpredictable, especially the exact phrasing (and the sport scores), that they offer pretty good proof that the message was signed recently. I suspect it's mostly to show that they have not been lazy and prepared all the messages well in advance (which if they did could conceivable weaken the scheme somewhat). But I agree it's probably a minimal improvement in the usefulness of the canary.
- eternalban 4y agoLet's say a state actor needs a window of 1 week to do some mischief. Just a couple of days to comprise network x. Assume the exploit is worth knocking off a known person, or creating a news worthy event. I think these bits give a false sense of security.
- delusional 4y agoThis doesn't really protect from a targeted attack of nation state dead set on keeping it a secret. That would be almost impossible. This is supposed to protect against the much more likely scenario that some government authority or government official decides to commit and overreach and order the disclosure of data and a gag order, but without the full support of the nations information agency. It's not supposed to guarantee Putin that the US hasn't seen his porn collection. It's supposed to tell me (a regular guy) that the government hasn't seen my vacation photos in secret.
- ctab 4y agoThe problem with sports scores is that it would be trivial to procedurally generate signed messages ahead of time for thousands of different team names and scores, and then select one that matches the eventual reality.