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It's not even a representation of the public key itself; it's the SHA256 fingerprint of the key. There's no practical way to transform that back into the key --
by duskwuff 4y ago
It's not even a representation of the public key itself; it's the SHA256 fingerprint of the key. There's no practical way to transform that back into the key -- and, in any case, the server will send that key to any client that connects, so it's not like recovering it from a screenshot accomplishes anything.
- Darkphibre 4y agoI suppose the argument would be that the key search space is reduced. Statistically speaking, you know the weights of certain binary pairs if the image is not evenly distributed. But I'm guessing that it'd only drop the average search space by... two or three powers of two for most keys?
- duskwuff 4y agoAgain: the randomart image is based on a hash of the public key. If you want to know what that key is, all you have to do is ask the server. You don't need to launch a sophisticated, expensive cryptographic attack to obtain it.