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> and see if I started to be able to recognize the randomart images in the way the manual implies I'd be able to, and it turns out it worked!

How computationally expensive is it to generate a key with randomart that kinda-resembles a known randomart?

I've always ignored randomart since I always assumed it's easy to get a close-enough "collision".

EDIT: algorithm explained here https://pthree.org/2013/05/30/openssh-keys-and-the-drunken-b...

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Seems to be pretty doable ("collisions" in the last section): https://blog.benjojo.co.uk/post/ssh-randomart-how-does-it-wo...

The same question goes for how computationally expensive it is to generate a key that kinda-resembles a known key? If you are just eyeballing the key "yeah that looks like Github's key" when the terminal ask you, you might fall for a fake one that merely begins with the same characters.

The neat trick is that it's others of magnitude harder to find a key that kinda-resembles a known key and kinda-resmbles it's randomart, so if both are presented at the same time, you'd be safer.

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