Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2006 20:59:12 -0500 From: "Nikolas Britton" <nikolas.britton@gmail.com> To: "User Freebsd" <freebsd@hub.org> Cc: Robert Huff <roberthuff@rcn.com>, Xiao-Yong Jin <xj2106@columbia.edu>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Gotta start somewhere ... how many of us are really out there? Message-ID: <ef10de9a0608011859q45bdd636o757fb4aba2d3404d@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <20060801223754.U27679@ganymede.hub.org> References: <20060728164526.E27679@ganymede.hub.org> <44CDE02F.4090604@dial.pipex.com> <44CE7DD0.9070902@childeric.freeserve.co.uk> <871ws1v261.fsf@photon.homelinux.org> <20060731220830.B27679@ganymede.hub.org> <ef10de9a0608010121j154c7ael7ece0997a479572e@mail.gmail.com> <20060801120058.O27679@ganymede.hub.org> <17615.30414.314802.792740@jerusalem.litteratus.org> <ef10de9a0608011037w3609b5a6k1709aea61d43ed0f@mail.gmail.com> <20060801223754.U27679@ganymede.hub.org>
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On 8/1/06, User Freebsd <freebsd@hub.org> wrote: > On Tue, 1 Aug 2006, Nikolas Britton wrote: > > > On 8/1/06, Robert Huff <roberthuff@rcn.com> wrote: > >> User Freebsd writes: > >> > Actually, using ifconfig wouldn't work ... it would give unique, but as > >> > soon as you add another IP (ie. alias), the ID would change ... you'd > >> need > >> > to do something like: > >> > > >> > ifconfig | grep ether | sha256 | md5 > >> > > >> > since the 'ether' would never change ... > >> > >> At least some cards (+ FreeBSD drivers) allow you to set the > >> MAC address .... > >> > >> > >> > > > > You still don't get it! Maybe this simple perl program will illustrate > > the problem: > > > > my $number = "100000000000000000000"; > > my $randomkey = ""; > > while (0 == 0) { > > $randomkey = `echo $number | md5`; > > print "fetch http://www.hub.org/freebsd_stats.php?HOSTID=$randomkey"; > > $number++ > > } > > > > Also by using only the mac address output of ifconfig you have limited > > the pool of unique keys to 16^12 (281,474,976,710,656)!!! All I need > > to do to find your mac address is compute all possible mac address > > combinations into MD5 and then just simply match it up with yours. > > Anonymity only works if the input is large then the output!!! Because > > it's computationally impossible to compute all values of a 500+ byte > > string etc. etc. The MD5 string maps back to at least (how do you > > compute the collisions?) two SHA256 keys and the SHA256 maps back to > > at least two ifconfig strings. > > Thing is, we aren't so much looking for anonymity as we are uniqueness, > but, wouldn't the CPU serial id not be both? > > Ok.. lets start from the top, again. Why do we need uniqueness? -- BSD Podcasts @: http://bsdtalk.blogspot.com/ http://freebsdforall.blogspot.com/
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