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Video: Glenn Greenwald Is Grilled on BBC Newsnight, Spews Insults Like a Firehose

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Testy Toad T10/03/2013 8:49:04 pm PDT

re: #115 John Vreeland

He’s off by three factors of two. 2 * 2 * 2 = 8, as in 8 bits per byte.

For perspective, 4096 bits = 512 bytes. But if you are thinking about this like the sort of password you use to log in, it would be more like ASCII, which is only seven bits, or about 585 characters. If you want to think of it as a long PIN, or a credit card number, it would be about 1,233 digits.

This would take a long, long time to crack. ..

Well, yes and no. Greenwald may be using 4096-bit encryption (er… 4000 characters lol).

How much you want to bet his plaintext-password is not using all 4096 bits available within his encryption scheme? I’ll tell you what, I’m sure not.

I’d wager a considerable sum of money the password is more like “hell0_kitty” and it’s using a technically-impressive but functionally-lame level of encryption.