3 ms·
All security can be broken/beaten. The trick is making the evasion process more costly than "proper" acquisition of the contents. In this case, it's easier to j
by ctdonath 14y ago
All security can be broken/beaten. The trick is making the evasion process more costly than "proper" acquisition of the contents. In this case, it's easier to just look up all the 5-letter words matching known letters (or otherwise corresponding to other fixed-length overlapping words), to wit just write a crossword solver.
Bob can always just fall back on rubber hose cryptography.
- tgflynn 14y agoYes but real cryptographic functions, like SHA256, are extremely hard to reverse. I doubt writing a crossword solver is an easier solution since that would need to deal with word definitions and is hence a natural language problem.
- ctdonath 14y agoThe point of the article was to explain the concept of one-way functions. The objection was to how easy it would be to crack that example. My objection to the objection was that the example is still harder than finding the secret thru "legitimate" means. I see crosswords as a data problem: given a dictionary of valid words, generate all possible solutions for the given grid. As the number of overlapping words is quite limited, shouldn't take long to run. The only natural-language factor is deciding which solution matches the clues provided. Dang, now I'm gonna have to go write one...