Top all-time · #15882
Cryptosmith
Personal blog · cryptosmith.comsecurityprogramming
Cryptosmith is a personal blog at cryptosmith.com about security and programming. Since 2012, 5 different Hacker News readers have linked it 6 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-05-25, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (5) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters link Cryptosmith posts as references on one-time pads and how XOR-based key reuse exposes plaintext. The linked posts are cited as examples or sources, not praised.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 5 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Cyber and security architecture, not bitcoins
What Hacker News says?
Also, https://www.troyhunt.com/passwords-evolved-authentication-gu... forcing https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/03/02... regular https://www.wired.com/2016/03/want-safer-passwords-dont-chan... password https://practical365.com/security/microsoft-recommending-non... changes https://www.scmagazineuk.com/end-password-expiry/article/147... is https://www.sans.org/security-awareness-training/blog/tim…
Comment linking /password-sanity/exp-harmful/
on “Microsoft says mandatory password changing is “ancient and obsolete” (2019)”Submitted Memoir to Secure Computing Technology Corp as a story · 1 points
HN discussionReusing one-time-pad keys means you can often very easily recover the plaintext simply by XOR'ing the two encrypted files, since it effectively takes the key out of the picture, see for example http://www.cryptosmith.com/archives/70 (where the key is literally taken out of the picture)
Comment linking /archives/70
on “Leaping Brain's "Virtually Uncrackable" DRM is just an XOR with "RANDOM_STRING"”re 1&2. Ok, that's what I was thinking. Thanks for the refresher. re protection model. Nah, it was MULTICS from a Saltzer and Shroeder paper. They're among the pioneers of INFOSEC in high-assurance security which I'm often talking about here. They describe their reasoning about that here [1]. It, segments, and an IOMMU were in SCOMP, the first system certified to high security. Early promoter Roger Schell got an ex-…
Comment linking /mls/lock/
on “Open source firmware is important for security”For a more thorough description of OTP see https://cryptosmith.com/2007/06/09/one-time-pads/
Comment linking /2007/06/09/one-time-pads/
on “Modern-day spying: sometimes old technology is more secure”(Forgot to respond to part about a government organization to get secure products out. Here's response to that.) It's been done before. It was the Walker Security Initiative. It resulted in some of the most secure products the market ever produced. A combination of lobbying for insecure products to be bought and NSA's actions destroyed what little there was to the market. Bell describes it: http://lukemuehlhauser.co…
Comment linking /mls/lock/
on “U.S. Cities Strain to Fight Hackers”