Talk:538: Security

I was in a flea market one time when I saw a booth who sold wrenches. They were priced starting at $2. There were even $5 wrenches! Yes; I did this in response to this comic strip. No; I did not buy one. (I have no need to "crack" a computer. I just wanted to prove that there is a $5 wrench.) Greyson (talk) 02:15, 3 November 2012 (UTC) (Oops... I forgot to log on... I feel... scared.) Greyson (talk) 02:15, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Remember the other comic, talking about how much does your time spent to pick up a penny cost? This applies here too! It's not just $5 for the wrench, there is also the time of the guy who will be hitting with it! Although of course the wrench is amortizable over multiple secret extraction sessions, unless it gets bent too much out of shape. 108.162.246.5 20:57, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

I went to the flea market and bought a $5 wrench, then used it to beat the password out of 2^5 nerds. I just wanted to prove that there is a $5 wrench and that it's reasonable to amortize it over multiple extraction sessions. The wrench is still in good shape, even to use as a wrench. 108.162.215.115 18:26, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Why does everyone imagine that the "crypto nerd" will be a "him"? This gendered language is simply reinforcing the sexist stereotypes that serve as the cultural foundation for rape and other symptoms of this sexist worldview. I'm changing this to "him or her"... -- Vctr (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

The text of the comic refers to the cryptonerd being a him. Please check yourself before you wreck yourself. 108.162.221.99 18:07, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

It says in the comic that the 'crypto nerd' is a 'him': "His laptop is encrypted". --108.162.216.118 15:45, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Same concept as 416: Zealous Autoconfig. Shanek (talk) 12:31, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

BTW "him or her" leaves out gender-nonconforming people and is also is unnecessarily clunky - "they" is usually a better choice. It's great that you want to reduce the use of gendered language on the internet, though. Just be careful not to go overboard; there's a difference between identification and unnecessarily gendered language. DownGoer (talk) 01:42, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

What would happen if the owner of the computer used deniable cryptography with some decoy message? -- 173.245.48.141 08:35, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

As pointed out by the wikipedia article, deniable cryptography might either fool the attackers, or make them keep beating you even after you give them the real password. 198.41.235.179 22:48, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Surely if he's encrypting his PC, he should be using something like 256-bit AES/Rijndael, as it's more secure? Walale12 (talk) 10:11, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

I doubt the crypto "nerd"'s nerdiness. RSA is not generally used for disk encryption. It relies on the computation of large primes, a task infeasible for data of such size. Instead, AES is used. 108.162.250.163 13:54, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

Quite often, disk encryption is done in two steps: Instead of generating key directly from passphrase, random symmetrical key is generated and used for actual encryption of whole disk, then encrypted by key generated from passphrase and stored ON the disk. That allows to change the passphrase without reencrypting whole disk. While the algorithm used for encrypting disk could be and often is AES, it's possible to use RSA for the second step. And breaking 4096bit RSA would still be quicker than breaking 256bit AES. -- Hkmaly (talk) 22:35, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

The main problem with RSA being used here is that RSA is an asymmetric cipher. That kind of cryptography is useful when you have two or more parties that have different roles, for example one of them can only encrypt and the second one can only decrypt. But when it comes to disc encryption (even in the two-step variant), there is only one party (the computer owner) so the only reasonable solution is a symmetric cipher (e.g. AES). Technically, RSA could be used here, but that would be very artificial and would be a clear sign that our "nerd" doesn't really understand the difference.Bebidek (talk) 20:45, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

You perhaps could describe a system whereby the encapsulating layer(s) of security expose write-only privileges and read-only privileges to the greater system (which may anticipate multi-user access (concurrent or in parallel), separately defined agency of 'permittable' daemons, even the possibility of externally connected streaming-IO properly secured at the Transmission Layer or below) selectively at a level even more basic than that which the OS's own User Access Control (or equivalent) plays a part in.

Though once you start going into that level of security, surely you need some very good reason to be Properly Paranoid about your particular system's setup. Like some sort of system designed to be totally Write-Once Read-Never (e.g. an uninterceptable rolling record of bodycam footage that you wouldn't like to risk being leaked) until and unless a rather precise and particular failover mechanism is triggered. 162.158.38.71 21:42, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Lol. The spelling "wench"

My game is up! Drat! ;)

Please sign your comments. - Also this article has been vandalized few times, to change wrench->wench. I now notice that the title text here also says so. On the original page it says wrench. --Lupo (talk) 06:15, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

> Life imitates xkcd comic as Florida gang beats crypto password from retiree - Welp. --HypaBeast (talk) 18:35, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

QUICK! GET XKCD TO PREDICT THE END OF GLOBAL WARMING! Caliban (talk) 07:53, 10 October 2024 (UTC)