The 37C3 talk on TEA1 encryption (used by police and military units in europe) is hilarious.
The hackers announced they found a vulnerability in the encryption, and one of the ways the organization that standardized TEA1 downplayed the breach was by saying that it wasn't viable, because it required "high powered GPUs".
So they ported their algorithm to a Toshiba Satellite running Windows 95, and re-cracked the encryption there.
but that's some hilarious pettiness. "oh, this isn't really a risk because it requires new hardware, and it was sensible when it was designed back in the 90s? Well, screw you, we'll hack your shit on a 90s laptop we bought off ebay!"
@foone Same vibe as converting a voting computer into a chess computer after the manufacturer claimed that it is a trustworthy single purpose voting machine, not a computer, and that he doubts this could be done.
@wiert@PeterKratz@foone@erd@rop
was specifically mentioning erdgeist because he and willem - who is not on mastodon to my konwledge - were adapting that chess solver to the micro controller as far as i remember. While I was gluing coins on the bottom parts of chess figures.
@argv_minus_one nah, that's just how Toshiba Satellites are. I've got several, and other than the batteries, they'll just happily keep working for 25 years. They're some hardy machines.
@lanodan sounds like something from a Charles Stross Halting State novel: the police figure out they're being spied on because they discover the AWS VM's get spun up at the same time as they use their radios.
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