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IBM using Napoleon Dynamite Quote to Encrypt Data

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the masters-of-the-bo-staff dept.

schmack writes "A developer discovers a quote from the movie Napoleon Dynamite is being used as the cipher key by IBM to publish encrypted XML at this year's Wimbledon grand slam. But is this a rather glaring lapse in security or an easter egg for curious hackers, many of whom would surely be fans of the quirky movie?"

1 of 170 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Script substrings by (H)elix1 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Scripts of popular movies such as the Star Wars trilogy are obvious things to include in a cracking dictionary.

    Amen!

    I've seen this on some of my external servers - long lists of dictionary attacks. For a while someone was trying to log into executioner. Before an IP filter was added, we would get tons of login attempts in the logs. Quotes were always in there, including things like Darth quotes (Ifylofd, Tfiswto, Issapinfs, Ysnhcb, and the l33t spelling variants of words and phrases). It became a bit of a game to figure out who could guess the quote based on the attempted password. If you think the first letters of a quote are protection, you are in for a rude awakening when you get back into the office next week. (Happy 4th of July to those in the States)

    --
    +++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU