[Cryptography] DH non-prime kills "socat" command security

Phillip Hallam-Baker phill at hallambaker.com
Sat Feb 6 13:35:32 EST 2016


On Fri, Feb 5, 2016 at 9:38 PM, Peter Gutmann <pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz> wrote:
> mok-kong shen <mok-kong.shen at t-online.de> writes:
>
>>Among possible causes I surmise that possibly Miller-Rabin test was used to
>>find a prime,
>
> I doubt it.  I surmise that possibly Google was used to find it, and then you
> cut & paste what's in the first search result on Stackexchange.

This is exactly the same as what passes for political argument on the
Internet. People want the number to be prime and so they assume it
MUST be prime. Checking the facts doesn't matter.

In another part of the net I am trying to convince someone that the
reason Wentworth house needs $80 million in repairs is the subsidence
due to the mine that runs directly under (parts of) the house. The
fact that there is a mine under the house isn't really disputable
because the house was built with the fortune from the mines. But oh
no, the idea that plutocrats of a past age would have caused the
destruction of their quarter million square foot Palladian palace
doesn't fit their ideology. So the cause must be the open cast mining
Manny Shinwell ordered after WWII.


Proof by wishful thinking is a real problem.


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