Reading my usual Bitcoin hotsheets, the #bitcoin-assets logs and Trilema, I stumbled upon a really cool toy from a new bitcoin venture. No Such lAbs has introduced a beautiful tool in Phuctor: The RSA Super Collider. It does something people have been looking for and not finding, it tells you whether or not there are glaring flaws in your RSA public key1 As it gets fed more public keys it gets stronger by identifying factors your public key might share with other keys, which would reveal your key is weak.
The way it works is simple. You paste your GPG public key into the box, click submit, and then you bookmark and revisit the page for your key periodically until it has been tested. It could take a while, because while the math involved isn't necessarily complex in theory a lot of it needs to be done. The Trilema article covers quite a bit more of the details, and the Phuctor site has an overview of the theory and why you should revisit your Key's page occasionally. I'd pay close attention to the part of the Trilema article that notes while this service is free now, it may not remain free indefinitely as electricity has a cost.
Even if you don't care about GPG because you hate digital signatures and think being able to use the electronic equivalent of an envelope is useless, if you care about Bitcoin business and would eventually like to be a part of it there is something to learn from No Such lAbs. If you want to make a Bitcoin business that excites people and garners interest, make it a venture that offers something new and useful. Making yet another dice site is boring. Making faucets and ad filled landing pages is boring. Trying to create a new mining business is boring while also making you appear scammy. Most ideas random newbs are attracted to have been beaten to death.
Take the time to learn what the Bitcoin space needs if you want to make a business in Bitcoin. Don't take the low hanging fruit that's been overdone. Make useful things that people want. Learn the steps for getting involved in Bitcoin business and remember that the Cryptography is rather key to this cryptocurrency thing. Learn to GPG, learn to use the tools people in Bitcoin use, and learn what people in Bitcoin want.2 When you have the experience to show you are probably competent to execute your idea, people are probably going to be relieved.
In the meantime though Phuctor Your Public Key
Update: Stanislav Datskovskiy, the dude handling the technical side of No Such lAbs also announced this on his blog with a screenshot of his public key as an example. Also Phuctor is faster now by 100 times.
- That thing you should be using with GPG for message signing and encryption. [↩]
- What people in Bitcoin want refers to people who have bitcoin want rather than what random forumites and n00bs insist on and beg for. I mean you do want customers to pay eventually. [↩]
Now with 100x speedup.
That's a phuking handy article. I think I will be sorting GPG while this is free.
[…] write on things you can do with your key, but in the mean time plug your public key into the Phuctor and maybe practice generating, backing up, and revoking keys for a bit before settling on your key. […]
[…] approach of No Such lAbs, the people behind the Phuctor, proceeds from the assumption of a generally more hostile computing environment, per their initial […]
[...] write on things you can do with your key, but in the mean time plug your public key into the Phuctor2and maybe practice generating, backing up, and revoking keys for a bit before settling on your key. [...]
Awesome. I have yet to see a Mining Company increase their computing power so incredibly in response to demand.
Thanks. Well I'm not involved with making the Phuctor, but it is something I've wanted to see for a while.
I guess it is probably time to start writing about how to get started with GPG.
Yes please! That, I really would like to read.
All it took was rewriting the arithmetic piece using GMP. If something is worth doing, it's worth doing right...
Send any bug reports (along with any pubkey triggering the latter) my way.