Is is that hard to believe that two different trekkies (my friend, and possibly the author of the software) might have picked the same "random" constant that just happened to be the title of a TNG episode? It was very surprising at the time, but plausible given that people give VERY non-uniform-random values when asked to pick a random number.
Meh, believe it or not, it's what happened. The real lessons are that XOR isn't a very secure hash function, and a lot of high school level "security" has often been little more than a cheap facade.
On hindsight, his friend might XOR a known password's hash with the clear text to uncover OxC9. But coming up the idea on the spot is pretty smart as well
Meh, believe it or not, it's what happened. The real lessons are that XOR isn't a very secure hash function, and a lot of high school level "security" has often been little more than a cheap facade.