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Comment by andix | Hacker News Reader

I'm wondering how many other private keys might be cropped to 32, 64 or 128 bit and much weaker than we think. Seems like nobody tested it yet. Otherwise the 8 bit would've been found within minutes.

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It’d be absurd to believe nobody tested these, and that no individuals involved in relevant standards bodies were aware of this weakness.

Those 8 bit certs were out for over a year, in the public. So nobody tested them. At least no independent security researcher.

>. So nobody tested them.

A lot of people would benefit a lot from this incident if they keep it to themself

We live in an absurd universe, the absurd should be expected.

"absolutely no way that there is a $100 bill on the sidewalk- if there were, somebody would have picked it up already"

If you've got the compute power, it's easy enough to have a go at it!

Is it legal? I thought the DMCA protects flimsy security of this kind by making it illegal to check if its flimsy.

No idea what the DMCA says. It doesn't apply in most parts of the world, and also not where I live. So it's for sure legal somewhere.

I'm not sure what laws apply to you where you live so you'd have to check, but you could also do this on pen and paper if that helps :)

What I've heard about the DMCA, they will even throw you in jail if you crack the calculation in your head. Without telling anyone or writing it down. ;)

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