Chief Delphi - Encrypted morally grey

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Re: Encrypted morally grey

This comes up every year. It shouldn't be surprising that it does either. I doubt the intention of those who think about it is malicious. Encryption presents a problem, and FIRST attracts problem solvers.

The encryption on .pdfs is enormously effective. Even with extensive computing power and techniques it would take a huge effort and long time to brute force the encryption- and it's incredibly boring. No matter how clever FIRST participants may be, there just isn't a reasonable chance that anyone is breaking it.*

If anyone is interested in crypto science, and it is a fascinating field, there are tons of forums, websites, books and newsgroups dedicated to the subject. It's much more interesting and rewarding to create and test theoretical crypto systems then to beat your head against the wall that is AES, which is exactly what those forums do.

If you want to play with encryption, go look for sites dedicated to the subject. It's just not worth stirring up the ethic pot here.

*I do recall that, many years ago, the encryption scheme built into .pdf's was quite weak, something like 64bit and open to a number of side channel attacks. It was possible to crack it in a few days, and I know for a fact this happened at least once. 128bit AES is, of course, many orders of magnitude more secure. I wouldn't be surprised to see a 256bit implementation, eventually.

Re: Encrypted morally grey

By now i don't think it would really be that big of an advantage to know the game rules before kickoff. Besides a couple of more hours(in a 6-week build), there isn't any advantage.

13 hours 30 min. to go.

Re: Encrypted morally grey

If you choose to distribute your time like so, go ahead. Paying a lot of time for a little is inefficient, but the decision lies with the one who has the program.

Re: Encrypted morally grey

Quote:

Originally Posted by SuperNerd256 (Post 1097257)

The same protection used by NASA is used here, so it would be like hacking into NASA.

So if I kick in a door to get into my house, that door is the same kind of door used in the White House, so it's like I'm breaking into the White House? That really makes no sense.

Re: Encrypted morally grey

Quote:

Originally Posted by BlacksmithWoods (Post 1096958)

Honestly, I don't believe you because there is no way that you could have possibly "guessed" it. There wasn't even a great enough hint, considering even if the hint is related to the password at all. I don't think that it has been that way in a while.

Well, yeah. I can't imagine that anyone would take me seriously.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Daniel_LaFleur (Post 1096969)

Plus, Don didn't say tha password had an 'e' in in. He said it had an 'e' in it, and could have been speaking about the manual

Yes, I was speaking of the Manual, not the password.

Quote:

Originally Posted by davidthefat (Post 1097133)

In all seriousness. The password is encrypted with MD5 encryption 50 times over and RC4 20 time over or something like that.

Indeed, the ONLY viable method of finding the password is brute force, and that would take a very, very long time, even with very large computing resources. You;d get a faster result by torturing the FIRST staff.

Quote:

Originally Posted by LMD3130 (Post 1097462)

This needs to stop coming up on ChiefDelphi this is a very taboo subject, FIRST focuses on gracious professionalism and it's not that gracious to other teams to cheat towards and early start nor is it a professional move to give your self such an advantage that others do not have. :mad: :mad: :mad:

No kidding, I would have never known that :rolleyes: You need to calm down and stop believing everything you read. You are too angry.

Quote:

Originally Posted by theprgramerdude (Post 1097489)

Honestly, I'll give $100 to anyone that can decrypt it before kickoff.

Um, exactly WHICH kickoff?:D

OK, just to clarify for the humorless masses: I DID in fact guess at the password, but my guess was wrong. (I now know the password isn't my name). So I really don't KNOW what is in the Manual (specifically), but I can state with absolute certainty that the letter "e" (lowercase!) appears at least once in the manual. Somewhere.

Re: Encrypted morally grey

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andy A. (Post 1097521)

*I do recall that, many years ago, the encryption scheme built into .pdf's was quite weak, something like 64bit and open to a number of side channel attacks. It was possible to crack it in a few days, and I know for a fact this happened at least once. 128bit AES is, of course, many orders of magnitude more secure. I wouldn't be surprised to see a 256bit implementation, eventually.

The PDFs are encrypted using Revision 4 of the algorithm. Before Revision 3, I believe the password was only encrypted once with MD5 and RC4. The only real change to the latest algorithm is the number of iterations it goes through encrypting.

Re: Encrypted morally grey

Quote:

Originally Posted by davidthefat (Post 1097622)

MD5 is a message digest function (also known as a hash function) and is a one-way operation. In the context of PDF encryption it is used for key stretching/strengthening and is intended to make potential brute forcers work even harder.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andy A. (Post 1097521)

If anyone is interested in crypto science, and it is a fascinating field, there are tons of forums, websites, books and newsgroups dedicated to the subject. It's much more interesting and rewarding to create and test theoretical crypto systems then to beat your head against the wall that is AES, which is exactly what those forums do.

If you want to play with encryption, go look for sites dedicated to the subject. It's just not worth stirring up the ethic pot here.

I believe this is the best advice on this thread. Working with cryptography problems as a software engineer has been very interesting for me. If anyone is interested in starting out with cryptography here are some good resources:

Theory and Practice of Cryptography series

Crypto Strikes Back!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySQl0NhW1J0

Presentations

Books

Cryptography Engineering by Niels Ferguson and Bruce Schneier

Blogs

Re: Encrypted morally grey

When will they say the password