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Step 6I'm too lazy to do all that, is there a faster way to use it?
Yes, there is, but it is nowhere near so secure, because it relies on the secrecy of the wiring, and trusting the systems where you put your password to not cooperate. The fast way is also not likely to meet the military and similar requirements for keeping passwords safe.
In fact, the fast method is really only sensible if the wiring of the machine is secret to you, which it isn't if you are using the PDFs from this Instructible. However, I do intend to make a web site available some time that will let you generate your own randomly wired machine.
That's the down side.
The up side is that there is a quick and dirty way to get nice random-looking passwords out of the thing in about 5 to 10 seconds, which is faster than the electronic password keepers that I have used. Apart from being unexpectedly practical, it also looks really swish.
You do it by setting the rotors to a 3 letter initial setting, as for the slow method. In the photo I have set it to CAT. Then, a fourth initialisation letter is used to pick a slice of the wiring to use as the password. In the example I have used "H", and thus a four letter initialisation of "CATH", which yields that password "afQhONMx".
This method is handy, but leaks lots of information about the wiring of the maching. This can be helped by using only every other letter of the password, and doing it twice, i.e., using a total of 8 initialisation letters in two lots of 4 to obtain 4 password letters each time, and thus an 8 letter password over all.
It is possible that this still leaks too much information, or is otherwise cryptographically weak, but I haven't got around to analysing it yet, except to realise that in this mode it is a simple static block substitution cipher.
The only other analysis I have done is that it is FAST. I can pull a password out using this method in perhaps 10 seconds, which is comparable to the electronic password thing that I used to use that kept having flat batteries and broken buttons.
In fact, the fast method is really only sensible if the wiring of the machine is secret to you, which it isn't if you are using the PDFs from this Instructible. However, I do intend to make a web site available some time that will let you generate your own randomly wired machine.
That's the down side.
The up side is that there is a quick and dirty way to get nice random-looking passwords out of the thing in about 5 to 10 seconds, which is faster than the electronic password keepers that I have used. Apart from being unexpectedly practical, it also looks really swish.
You do it by setting the rotors to a 3 letter initial setting, as for the slow method. In the photo I have set it to CAT. Then, a fourth initialisation letter is used to pick a slice of the wiring to use as the password. In the example I have used "H", and thus a four letter initialisation of "CATH", which yields that password "afQhONMx".
This method is handy, but leaks lots of information about the wiring of the maching. This can be helped by using only every other letter of the password, and doing it twice, i.e., using a total of 8 initialisation letters in two lots of 4 to obtain 4 password letters each time, and thus an 8 letter password over all.
It is possible that this still leaks too much information, or is otherwise cryptographically weak, but I haven't got around to analysing it yet, except to realise that in this mode it is a simple static block substitution cipher.
The only other analysis I have done is that it is FAST. I can pull a password out using this method in perhaps 10 seconds, which is comparable to the electronic password thing that I used to use that kept having flat batteries and broken buttons.
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This is all kinds of awesome :)
So, am I right in thinking that to make a new wiring, I would just need to reproduce the middle disk, with different pairs of points reflected?
pix
Paul.