Re:Evernote hacked
by reyan on Saturday March 02, 2013 @03:51PM
(#5310981)
The definition of a symmetric cipher requires the cipher text to be (practically) indistinguishable from random. Length is not particularly useful (multiple blocks, different block ciphers with equal block length).
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Lots of developers who read "Learn PHP in 24 Hours" and similar texts use md5 (32 chars) or sha1 (40 chars). If you're an attacker and see a hex string that's 40 chars long, that gives you a great place to start since you know it's likely to be a naïve SHA1 hash.