flak rss random

thx nsa

At the core of the bcrypt pbkdf is the magic string c"OxychromaticBlowfishSwatDynamite". The particular value of the string doesn’t change the algorithm, but the hash works by encrypting this string. All generated outputs are really just ciphertext versions of the magic string. What does it mean?

Let’s arrange the words on a 4x8 grid.

Oxychrom
aticBlow
fishSwat
Dynamite

An interesting pattern emerges with the capital letters. They form a triangle. Let’s take the letters inside.

 xy
atic
fish
 yn

Atic fish? Y/N? hmmm. Two lines of two letters with a y and two lines of four with an i. y? i? They’re the only letters repeated, and perhaps have some other relationship (“change the y to an i...“). We’ll have to think about this some more. For now, let’s combine lines of equal lengths.

xyyn aticfish

yy is very unusual in English. Maybe it doesn’t belong. Or maybe it’s a hint about the i as well? There seems to be some relationship between i and y, certainly. What if we delete the ys and the is and also the letters between the is? As so:

xn atsh

And suddenly the hidden message is revealed. It’s an anagram for thx nsa.

Posted 31 Aug 2014 21:30 by tedu Updated: 31 Aug 2014 21:31
Tagged: openbsd rants software