From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Aug 2 01:38:18 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BD75B16A4DD for ; Wed, 2 Aug 2006 01:38:18 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd@hub.org) Received: from hub.org (hub.org [200.46.204.220]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 926AA43D64 for ; Wed, 2 Aug 2006 01:38:13 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from freebsd@hub.org) Received: from localhost (mx1.hub.org [200.46.208.251]) by hub.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A4C79291AFC; Tue, 1 Aug 2006 22:38:07 -0300 (ADT) Received: from hub.org ([200.46.204.220]) by localhost (mx1.hub.org [200.46.208.251]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id 69708-06; Tue, 1 Aug 2006 22:38:12 -0300 (ADT) Received: from ganymede.hub.org (blk-224-179-167.eastlink.ca [24.224.179.167]) by hub.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BAFA5290C6B; Tue, 1 Aug 2006 22:38:06 -0300 (ADT) Received: by ganymede.hub.org (Postfix, from userid 1027) id CE8885D58E; Tue, 1 Aug 2006 22:38:16 -0300 (ADT) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by ganymede.hub.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CD9D45CAB2; Tue, 1 Aug 2006 22:38:16 -0300 (ADT) Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2006 22:38:16 -0300 (ADT) From: User Freebsd To: Nikolas Britton In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20060801223754.U27679@ganymede.hub.org> References: <20060728164526.E27679@ganymede.hub.org> <20060730233839.I27679@ganymede.hub.org> <44CDAA98.3030702@freebsd.org> <44CDE02F.4090604@dial.pipex.com> <44CE7DD0.9070902@childeric.freeserve.co.uk> <871ws1v261.fsf@photon.homelinux.org> <20060731220830.B27679@ganymede.hub.org> <20060801120058.O27679@ganymede.hub.org> <17615.30414.314802.792740@jerusalem.litteratus.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Cc: Robert Huff , Xiao-Yong Jin , freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Gotta start somewhere ... how many of us are really out there? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 02 Aug 2006 01:38:18 -0000 On Tue, 1 Aug 2006, Nikolas Britton wrote: > On 8/1/06, Robert Huff wrote: >> User Freebsd writes: >> > Actually, using ifconfig wouldn't work ... it would give unique, but as >> > soon as you add another IP (ie. alias), the ID would change ... you'd >> need >> > to do something like: >> > >> > ifconfig | grep ether | sha256 | md5 >> > >> > since the 'ether' would never change ... >> >> At least some cards (+ FreeBSD drivers) allow you to set the >> MAC address .... >> >> >> > > You still don't get it! Maybe this simple perl program will illustrate > the problem: > > my $number = "100000000000000000000"; > my $randomkey = ""; > while (0 == 0) { > $randomkey = `echo $number | md5`; > print "fetch http://www.hub.org/freebsd_stats.php?HOSTID=$randomkey"; > $number++ > } > > Also by using only the mac address output of ifconfig you have limited > the pool of unique keys to 16^12 (281,474,976,710,656)!!! All I need > to do to find your mac address is compute all possible mac address > combinations into MD5 and then just simply match it up with yours. > Anonymity only works if the input is large then the output!!! Because > it's computationally impossible to compute all values of a 500+ byte > string etc. etc. The MD5 string maps back to at least (how do you > compute the collisions?) two SHA256 keys and the SHA256 maps back to > at least two ifconfig strings. Thing is, we aren't so much looking for anonymity as we are uniqueness, but, wouldn't the CPU serial id not be both? > ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email . scrappy@hub.org MSN . scrappy@hub.org Yahoo . yscrappy Skype: hub.org ICQ . 7615664