From Trusting to Hashing to Trusting Again

I grew up in the snowbelt of upstate NY, and like most kids was subjected to many a boring winter day study hall in high school. It's 1978. Way before the Sony PS Vita, and before the iPad now threatens to kill off all handheld gaming units, there was Coleco Electronic Quarterback. It had a simple LED grid representing the playing field, and a few buttons that would let you run plays by moving the dot representing the player.

Those things were banned during school hours nearly instantly for their annoying beeping. Teachers relished busting kids trying to sneak them in, even when they tried to play with the sound off.

But calculators were another matter, entirely, and I was armed with my prize possession: a Texas Instruments TI-59. So, I wrote a football game simulation, which used numeric play inputs from 1 to 99, bounced that off some seeding numbers to compute the success of a play call, and tracked down, distance, and score. Game on.

Eventually, one of my friends started beating me regularly. It didn't take long to discover he was pulling up the registers storing the offensive play input, and he'd gotten enough of a feel for the algorithm to call good defensive plays and generate turnovers. Fail.

Had I heard of Dr. Whit Diffie, I'd have been smarter and hashed the seed and the play inputs, making things more random and encrypted so even if they were read the results wouldn't be predictable. Instead, we installed a play clock rule so the defense didn't have time to read the several registers and make a decision, reestablishing the trust and fun that way.

Today, the stakes are a lot higher with the Internet of Things, but the problem is the same.

Read the Whole Article