Comment by john_strinlai
10 hours ago
new email from wayne, who is the original reporter:
"I've had more than a few emails asking on how this was discovered. The simple answer is: https://github.com/google/paranoid_crypto
Yeah, out of the box. CCADB was intended to be a quick corpus test before looking at subscriber certificates...
I've done a far more thorough check of all existing CCADB certificates, thankfully no more hits. Most of my time has been spent going over the basics that everyone assumed someone else had already done - a critical mistake to ever make near security.
So unless someone has significantly more computational resources or access to more cryptanalysis research the low-hanging fruit has been caught so far."
https://groups.google.com/a/mozilla.org/g/dev-security-polic...
I must say, if I was writing a password cracker, I probably would not think to actually start at "1".
Of course not, we start at negative zero.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signed_zero
When I walk into a bar, I always ask the bartender for negative zero beers, just to check the place out, before placing my actual order.
I have not yet been accused of arson, but it's only a matter of time.
I don't know, when I run a password cracker, I always start with a brute force pass of very short passwords. Doing so adds a negligible amount of time to the crack, and its surprising how many short passwords you'll find in systems that permit them.
You should start at "" or 0, not "1".
First time I pointed John the Ripper to a password file it immediately started beeping like crazy. Turns out default password was no password, and 70% of the accounts were unused. Those happy quaint 90s...
Security through incredulity
"Certainly no one is that lazy/stupid/ironic..."
Welp, there goes that password
> https://github.com/google/paranoid_crypto
This repository was archived by the owner on Aug 19, 2026. It is now read-only.
I guess now that we've checked, nobody will ever make a mistake like this again so we don't need this anymore? :)
Archive is a nice solution in between just letting it rot on the vine forever and deleting it. Leaving it open doesn't immediately signal to users that the codebase is no longer in development, youd have to check when the last commit was. And even then, that doesn't tell you much. Is this so simple of an app that there's really nothing to patch or upgrade for long periods? A python script that converts some legacy file format into an open one might effectively be complete, there's nothing left to add or fix and there's no real threat vector to exploit. Or is this a cutting edge app that someone committed daily for years but now hasn't moved in a year.
The one thing I don't like about archive is the inability to add new issues. If I encounter a new issue, I don't necessarily want to fork it and track the new issue myself. I don't want to take responsibility for the code, I just want to let people know so someone else can fix it if they care.
Archived means it’s still available but signals that it won’t be developed.
Last commit was 2 years ago anyway.
I am sure the NSA will keep checking on our behalf.
You can still use a read-only archive.
I'm guessing this is the code:
https://github.com/google/paranoid_crypto/blob/main/paranoid...
the audacity of guessing all low hanging fruits have been found, right after guessing privkey=4
I have to be honest, that hasn't stopped me from trying!