Hacker News: connorlanigan

New comment by connorlanigan in "Show HN: Cryptographically random strings with zero clicks"

connorlanigan — Thu, 15 Aug 2019 08:48:58 +0000

Whenever I need random data for something (as a password, a token, a seed, a server-side secret...) and google for a generator, I always end up on random.org, entering the same configuration, clicking the same checkboxes and clicking the same button. This takes an unnecessary amount of time.

I built this website that uses secure defaults and immediately presents you with a string of random data generated locally in your browser. It uses the Web Crypto API [1] for obtaining strong randomness. It's running on Cloudflare to be as fast as possible.

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Crypto_...

Show HN: Cryptographically random strings with zero clicks

connorlanigan — Thu, 15 Aug 2019 08:48:15 +0000

Article URL: https://random.connorlanigan.com

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20703612

Points: 3

# Comments: 3

New comment by connorlanigan in "The PGP Problem"

connorlanigan — Wed, 17 Jul 2019 11:10:38 +0000

The safety number is only partly per-conversation. If you compare safety numbers of different conversations, you'll discover that one half of them is always the same (which half that is changes depending on the conversation). This part is the fingerprint of your personal key.

The Signal blog states that "we designed the safety number format to be a sorted concatenation of two 30-digit individual numeric fingerprints." [1]

The way I understand it, you could simply share your part of the number on your website, but Moxie recommends against it, since this fingerprint changes between reinstalls.

[1] https://signal.org/blog/safety-number-updates/