We already got a great UNIX, and programming jokes from XKCD, but the new one is about cryptography (funny because I’ve been reading a lot about Cryptography the last 2 weeks).
In case you don’t know, in Cryptography, Alice and Bob are commonly used instead of A and B, as in “Alice delivers a message to Bob”. There are other recurring characters like:
- Eve, the eavesdropper of Alice and Bob’s communication.
- Trent, a trusted third party.
- Mallory, a malicious hacker that can not only intercept Alice and Bob’s communication, but also modify, substitute, delete or introduce new messages, impersonating both Alice and Bob. We know this as Man in the Middle Attack.
By the way, there is also the Alice and Bob rap by “computer science gansta rapper” MC Plus+.
Alice and Bob
Alice is sending her message to Bob
Protecting that transmission is crypto’s job
Without the help of our good friend Trent
It’s hard to get that secret message sent
Work tries to deposit a check of your salary
But with no crypto it’ll be changed by Mallory
You think no one will see what it is you believe
But you should never forget there’s always an Eve
(Chorus)
‘Cause I’m encrypting sh*t like every single day
Sending data across the network in a safe way
Protecting messages to make my pay
If you hack me, you’re guilty under DMCA
DES is wrong if you listen to NIST
Double DES ain’t no better, man, that got dissed
Twofish for AES that was Schneier’s wish
Like a shot from the key, Rijndael made the swish
But Blowfish is still the fastest in the land
And Bruce used its fame to make a few grand
Use ECB and I’ll crack your cipher text
Try CFB mode to keep everyone perplexed
(Chorus)
Random numbers ain’t easy to produce
Do it wrong and your key I’ll deduce
RSA only public cipher in the game
Creating it helped give Rivest his fame
If we could factor large composites in poly time
We’d have enough money to not have to rhyme
Digesting messages with a hashing function
Using SHA-1 or else won’t cause dysfunction
(Chorus)
Nerds.
