• balsoft@lemmy.ml
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      22 days ago

      I think it technically was not “brute forcing” (since it wasn’t found by searching the entire key space), but specifically someone tried generating CA cert private keys from numbers 0-255, and surprisingly found a few.

      • SmoothLiquidation@lemmy.world
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        22 days ago

        It’s just as arbitrary as any other number. You can pick at random, but starting with a dictionary attack of easy, non-random keys would probably be a better start.

        I remember playing a game of dvd-deal or no deal, where you would pick random number from one to twenty and see if you won money. The people I was playing with were mad because I just started guessing 1, 2, 3, 4…

        I told them statistically it was just as likely to be those numbers as anything else.