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April 2, 2006

Internet Hash Project

I don't know if this is an April Fool's Day joke, but it's funny all the same.

Posted on April 2, 2006 at 10:43 AM • 14 Comments • View Blog Reactions

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Comments

The goatse.cx ASCII art in the source suggests it is probably less than serious :-)

Posted by: Steven Murdoch at April 2, 2006 11:28 AM

"More great services utilizing the Internet Hash are coming soon, including open APIs."

Ooh, open APIs. Then one could offer a _signed_ Internet Hash. That would give approximately the same security benefits as today's Internet PKI, ref. Peter Gutmann's "everything you never wanted to know about PKI but have been forced to find out"[1]!

[1] http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/pkitutorial.pdf

Posted by: Martin at April 2, 2006 11:29 AM

The site is hosted by kenshoto, the guys who run the defcon ctf, therefore, I guess it has something todo with the upcoming ctf for this years defcon. Also this should explain the goatse.cx ascii art.

Posted by: c at April 2, 2006 12:47 PM

Funny. If you submit a site, say like their own, it appears to randomly flip-flop between being "confirmed" and "not verified".

Posted by: Thom at April 2, 2006 1:47 PM

Well... Just take a look at the source code for the page. Does that look like a serious site?

Posted by: Anders at April 2, 2006 3:56 PM

Funny, when I told the police that my hash project was just an April Fools' Day prank, they weren't very sympathetic.

Posted by: Milan at April 2, 2006 4:29 PM

Can't remember the author's name unfortunately (short story).
1) Evil overlord pays for a bill to be passed in USA requiring all prospective parents to spend a month looking after a cyber-baby to prove that they are competent parents (otherwise required to be sterilised)
2) Teens look after cyber-baby which has malicious software to make it behave 'exactly' like a real baby. eg Cries when just about to have sex. Wakes up in night, foul odours .......
3) Sleep and sex deprived Teens give up baby after two weeks and request sterilisation.
4) Evil Overlord's army takes over USA when population is sufficiently small/elderly.

Posted by: rob at April 2, 2006 8:01 PM

@rob:

Dude, the movie-plot threat contest was yesterday :)

Posted by: D at April 2, 2006 9:21 PM

"Get the current Internet Hash" returns a 128 bit value. Which (old and broken) algorithm may they use?

Posted by: Secure at April 3, 2006 3:12 AM

It's a 256-bit hash, but they keep half the bits secret for increased security.

Posted by: Richard Braakman at April 3, 2006 3:39 AM

Reminds me of the "Internet Pre-shared Key", which has a lovely (googlable in the openbsd-misc archives) IETF origin story about a Jamaican restaurant and, natch, an expired draft:

http://www3.ietf.org/proceedings/99mar/I-D/draft-ietf-ipsec-internet-key-00.txt

OpenBSD uses the key in their VPN sample config files.

Posted by: John Ladwig at April 3, 2006 11:25 AM

Domain Name:NETHASH.ORG
Created On:28-Mar-2006 03:08:55 UTC
Last Updated On:28-Mar-2006 03:11:16 UTC

Posted by: Just Me at April 3, 2006 1:12 PM

Hi!

Has anybody looked at that html source code?

There is a not really serious ascii picture... Some kind of fun?

Posted by: Just a guest at April 5, 2006 5:49 AM

For sale:
The whole internet burned on DVDs for offline browsing.
2546 DVDs (or 21 DVDs without the porn).

Posted by: Akos at April 5, 2006 10:09 AM