Messages from the future
Mark Jason Dominus is debunking an article he read about passwords a future self could use to prove they’re really you when communicating with you back in time.
Mark’s technique looks very secure but I don’t really understand the problem. I’d just ask my future self “what colour was the pencil and what was its significance?” and “where did you hide the curry?”. I’m pretty sure nobody knows the answer to those things apart from me. I guess I must be missing something though…
January 5th, 2007 at 7:55 pm
red
your best friend at school stabbed you with it
washing machine
January 5th, 2007 at 7:56 pm
Not even close :)
January 6th, 2007 at 8:55 am
Genius
January 10th, 2007 at 10:16 pm
Are you sure you’ve never divulged that information to anyone else? Maybe when you were drunk?
And what if your interlocutor is not from the future at all, but is actually from the CIA, which, unbeknownst to you, has spied on you extensively and knows all of your dirty secrets, including the one about the pencil?
But no matter what the CIA knows now, they can’t manufacture a message to hand you that will be decrypted by a *future* series of coin flips. Only someone who knows the future can do that.
January 10th, 2007 at 10:25 pm
OK, maybe I’d chuck in the future coin flips just to be on the safe side. But I’d be pretty satisfied by the pencil thing to be honest. The curry is just belt and braces :)