Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Bye Bye md5 SSL

We've know for a while that md5 was weak. I can't put my finger on it, but I remember at least a couple mathematical weaknesses that reduced its cryptographic "hardness" to crack by orders of magnitude.

Now some researchers are estimating that for about $1500 of cloud computing resources from amazon, this can be done to md5 based SSL certificates. I know SHA-1 has a couple of similar math based weaknesses, so perhaps it is next. For now it reigns supreme!

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Where's the SUN?

I must say, I'm having a LOT of fun in Vietnam. Though I mostly work and train just like at home, still its a great experience living in another culture. The people are really nice everywhere, though you can tell there's not too many foreigners around here by the way they always look at me. Still I have only had 1 sunny day in a month here!

I did a little research on climate statistics. Below is the table of averages from Wikipedia's page about San Diego:

 Weather averages for San Diego 
MonthJanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDecYear
Average high °F65.866.666.468.469.171.676.377.777.274.770.066.070.2
Average low °F48.950.752.955.659.261.965.767.365.761.054.048.755.0
Precipitation inches2.282.042.260.750.200.090.030.090.210.441.071.3110.77
Average high °C18.819.219.120.220.622.024.625.425.123.721.118.921.2
Average low °C9.410.411.613.115.116.618.719.618.716.112.209.312.8
Precipitation mm57.951.857.419.005.102.300.802.305.311.227.233.2273.6
Source: Weather.com [3] January 2006
You can note that we AVERAGE about 11 inches of rain per YEAR and almost all of that is in the winter. Now lets look at Vietnam. Of course they have microclimates here as well because these stats DO NOT reflect the rain we get here in Da Nang. I again borrow from Wikipedia on Vietnam.

Climate chart for Vietnam
JFMAMJJASOND
 
 
19
 
20
12
 
 
27
 
21
13
 
 
39
 
24
18
 
 
80
 
29
21
 
 
198
 
32
22
 
 
240
 
33
25
 
 
322
 
32
26
 
 
345
 
32
25
 
 
250
 
31
24
 
 
99
 
28
23
 
 
44
 
25
19
 
 
21
 
21
16
temperatures in °C
precipitation totals in mm
Basically as a country it averages MORE RAIN IN A MONTH THAN WE SEE ALL YEAR. I think I could handle the rain if it was like Hawaii and got sunny in the afternoons, and I guess that's what it's like here in the summer. Clearly it gets HOT here in the summer so I can only imagine its a lot like texas. Oh sunny San Diego! I don't miss you, but I miss your sun.