Page 11 - 11Cyber

(Continued from page 10) your ears and listen up). During the war, the radio be-
came a vital tool for communications. The allies used
as a compressed file. When you get the file, you it to communicate from London to the generals in the
'unzip' it into a folder, then read, watch, listen to, or field. But they did not simply use plain words to give
somehow use the contents inside that file. The zip instructions. Instead, those instructions were pro-
was much smaller than the original contents inside cessed with machines that scrambled the letters. The
of it. Yet, it contains an EXACT duplicate of the orig- messages were 'encrypted.' Headquarters used a
inal inputs. If it didn't, you would be very upset. Your KEYCODE to garble the text. That text was sent by
program would not run, or your audio would not radio, and anyone with a receiver could get it. But on-
play, or the words in the text would turneenloiari- ly our side (mostly) had the matching KEYCODE to
uwwka08qkj k3lksd fjasdhd rhandnt making you UN-Encrypt the message.
very confused and unhappy. This is a two-way pro-
cess, In and out.
With our fast, modern-day computers, perhaps we
could now DECODE or CRACK those messages
Hash Algorithms are not a zip of the original input. (simple cipher codes), but they did not have the
While the Zip file was easy to unzip because it is means to do it then, so the messages were secure.
designed as a two-way process, the Hash is a one-
way process. You can MAKE a hash, but you can't But here again, the messages were designed as Two-
UN-MAKE it. It does not 'contain' any information way messages, containing the plain text going in and
about the input string; it cannot be cracked. Again, coming out with the same exact text when un-
this is a one-way process. What goes in can not encrypted. If it wasn't exact, it would have been of no
come out.
use in the war effort.

As an extreme example, this week, I installed a new With Hash Algorithms, there is no Container. There is
version of Linux on the computer I am typing on no KEY. No Unzipping. No Coding-No De-Coding, No
right now. The download was a 2 Gigabyte file. Part Encryption-No Un-Encryption. Because a Hash is on-
of the install instructions are to compare the SHA- ly an 'indicator' value.
256 Hash (2) of this download with a given 256-byte
check value. The SHA-256 Hash from the author-
ized site must match your value to ensure that yours Time to make Hash
is a complete, unaltered download. But the SHA-
256 Hash does not contain all of Linux Mint 20.2 Time for some fun. I want to program your brain. I
Cinnamon and all its files. If it did, I could have just want you to be my Hash Function Computer. You will
downloaded the Hash, UN-MAKE it, and installed it. have only one job. That is to give me an answer to
So, the files aren't contained in the Hash.
the question I will ask. Trust me, you have the brain-
power to do this.
Yet if I create the SHA Hash for the string 'A' (that is
just the letter A), I will still get a 256-byte hash val- Here is your input text:
ue. And it certainly does not compare to the con-
tents of my Linux download.
I am larger than a softball, smaller than a basketball, I
am covered with black and white pentagon shapes,
This is because a Hash is only what is called an and if you kick me into the net, you will score one
'indicator' value.
point What Am I?

The Container has a Key Hint: don't Google it. You will not find the answer...

Let me give you an-
other example and Just think...
use a couple of other
terms that have been
misused in this discus- Don't peak…
sion. Perhaps you re-
member WW 2 (No, I
am not trying to age
check you, so put your
hearing aids back in
(Continued on page 12)

Cyber Awareness Bulletin 11 October 2021