My moody μοῖρας

Some random Google searches, always humorous...

When life kicks you in the ass, laugh your ass off, gives Life a smaller target.

When life kicks you in the ass, make sure it kicks you forward

When life kicks you in the ass, turn around and kick it back. Then take it by the scruff of the neck and teach it not to kick you again

When life kicks you in the ass and gives you a handful of snails and industrial waste, make a traditional french meal.

When life kicks you in the ass it will leave a much smaller dent then it did would have before. [ed. Huh?]

When life kicks you in the ass, and you bite you lip and keep moving through the rains of fire.

When life kicks you in the ass, redirect your emotions and open your mind fully to the situation.

When life kicks you in the ass, ride a horse next time.

Yeah, it's been a week... it's been hard this past week. Rock on, universe, ... let my μοῖρας take me forward.

"Blogs are dead, long live Facebook"

I'm dying here... uck, uck, splah-chooo...

No really, there's just not a large pool of time for my brain these days which is either public (too much work) or that I have the time to flesh out my grand ideas.

It's been basketball season, now baseball season and it nukes my available time. Plus work projects are running over (reassigned to several odd projects, throws my timeline back).

Then there's RSA crypto, the Greek text and several other house, ranch and family projects leaving me with the odd couple of hours in which I just waste on movies and TV shows.

So sorry, dear readers, it's just not in the cards. Hit me up on Facebook, if for some bizarre, inexplicable reason you'd actually want to hear from me.

I iz lamer....

Well, actually I've had a few great thoughts lately, but they have yet to coagulate so far...

Subjects of late include:

1. Is running for office tax deductible - I realize there are special rules for "big campaigns," but I'm thinking more along the lines of the average Joe Politik running for mayor.
2. Post 9/11 retribution literature - There's a huge, growing body of literature devoted to the fantasy of "hitting back" and getting even for 9/11. Often they take a middle ground in treating Islam as a dualistic peaceful / hateful, but not always.
3. Relatedly, the death of shock in modern media. We've seen it all in TV and Movies, there's no real shock anymore. What comes next?

Anyway, just a few random ideas, maybe they'll make it here one day!

Happy V Day!

Notes on Windows Kernel Security...

Having been the lead architect on more than a few security projects - I can really appreciate the aims of the windows security kernel API.

A token to represent every object in the system. Objects live everywhere, as files, users, domains, et cetera.

But somewhere along the development timeline, vain attempts to obfuscate the true meaning of certain elements were chosen over safe techniques, using provably secure algorithms and clear documentation.

Simply speaking, it became an extreme example of complication with varying true security value. Drivers which run within the kernel are treated as aliens, pretending to be running in restrictions which are entirely fictitious fantasies - leading to insecurities and ultimately more bugs.

Provable security is difficult enough within the computer environment - safe timing, "true" randomness and safe, tested cryptographic algorithms are difficult enough as it is.

Don't get me wrong - the security paradigm of Windows is arguably much better (at least theoretically) than Unix. It's just done very badly.

For example, having to decide if I need a Security Context, a SID, LUID, SecurityUserData, or perhaps an Access token is inane and utter bull. All these types could easily be represented as a single type, with perhaps a non-referenced user-mode handle for safety.

So, for now, I put this down on my " Top Ten Horrors of the Security World."

Officially a blog slug...

Having been through a three major surgeries in the family, kids' week off from school, a few illnesses and several impending work deadlines - I have completely neglected this poor haven of strange ideas... yup, I'm a slug...

My RSA adventures have lead to some interesting shortening of attack vectors, but nothing of true value as of yet - though I thought I had it licked at one point! Still, some great insight for me.

I've learned a LOT on approaching impossible problems - analysis saves a lot of development work, but only if you're willing to identify and gather real data. Also, you need to analyze sets, not just points on a graph. Knowing your functional, set values and computational limitations beforehand gives you an enormous edge in quickly performing tests - but you must be careful not to be boxed into your own boundaries.

For instance, here's the boundaries for all RSA factors, taken as a percentage of distance from the square root. This trend holds for all magnitudes of prime and presents a rather reduced attack space than I first anticipated. The blue line is the running minimum "center point," the green space represents all possible distances between one the real factor and the square root of the quotient, and the blue space represents all possible distances between the one real factor and the center point (p + q / 2)

In laymen's terms - this means that there's no need to go outside of this space to look for possible p factors for the quotient pq - thus reducing the attack surface. In practical terms, the distance between the square root and one of the factors is AT MOST 2.5%!!! And though the distance may increase to 10% - it is a known search space of much reduced size. Yes, that is still a large area when dealing with 300 digit numbers - but VASTLY smaller than I originally anticipated. Perhaps this is well known among mathematicians - but it was an eye opener for me!

I definitely have gained much even though I have yet to solve this beast!

A new approach to cracking RSA...

I've spent 10 years tinkering with RSA factoring algorithms. Everybody needs a hobby, eh? I've tried many, many different approaches in solving the problem more efficiently than is currently practiced.

RSA factoring is plain stupidly simply. Find two prime numbers that are the factors of one very large number.

For example,

16347336458092538484431338838650908598417836700330923121
81110852389333100104508151212118167511579

× 19008712816648221131268515739354139754718967899685154936
66638539088027103802104498957191261465571

= 31074182404900437213507500358885679300373460228427275457
20161948823206440518081504556346829671723286782437916272
83803341547107310850191954852900733772482278352574238645
4014691736602477652346609

So far I've explored Russian Peasant division, bit multiplication shortcutting, bit reversal with vector unit multiplication, and traditional sieving and plain bruteforce. A few years back I happened across a new method - but it was only reliable in some cases. The fantastic news is that it when it did work - it was incredibly fast. I was able to factor 384 bit numbers in a few minutes, rather than hours.

I've lost the code, but I finally remembered the basic algorithm. And it occurred to me that perhaps it was simply a rounding error in my path decision algorithm.

Anyway - my "project rotation" is upon me again, and hopefully this time I will finally succeed.

Life's passage in a swirling pop of time..

I really can't believe how quickly time is passing since I hit about 35 years old! The kids had dug up some old pictures and drawings from 2003... and it dawned on my how very little time I feel has passed, yet I know that it's been SIX years. I feel as though there are so many things left to do, and so I am excitedly looking forward to what comes next.

I just need to build that laboratory now!