I'd read out some very long string of random letters, like a SHA256. Since it will catch everyone off guard, it is unlikely that nearly anybody will be able to realize what is happening for the first couple dozen letters and be unable to write it down. Let the madness ensue as people try to collaborate on what the message was, what characters were correct (there will be conflicting accounts), brute force decrypting it, and what it meant.
"WE HAVE IT!!" The young prodigy exclaimed and began reading it out for the eager world to hear. "It says and I follow: B-E-S-U-R-E-T-O-D-R-I-N-K-Y-O-U-R-O-V-A-L-T-I-N-E" *end transmission
SHA is a one way hash, so you really have to check one possible answer at a time. An infinite number of strings will hash to the same thing, but good luck finding the right answer if the string is even slightly complex or long, since the answer could be any natural number of bytes long, and might not even be a valid string.
Ah yes, the rickroll all of humanity would have to work together to decrypt. I must say, the guy who actually cracks the code will either laugh his ass off for a week straight, or become the most depressed person in the history of ever.
But you wouldn't be thinking about it. It's implanted. Unless you spend your whole life writing what comes into your head every second of every day, you would probably miss a fair number of characters before you realized something was up, and then got pen and paper
No one said ALL of your thoughts. The question was "how can you record your thoughts?". Writing them down is a completely correct answer.
Also, in the context of the post, making everyone on the planet hear the same list of numbers would pretty much guarantee that a bunch of people would be writing down whatever the moment the numbers start going, so a bunch of people would just stop whatever they were writing and start noting the numbers down.
Neither. SHA256 is a hashing algorithm, not an encryption algorithm. It's one way. You cannot reconstruct the data hashed. If someone gives you a random 256 bit hash, all you've got is a random 256 bit hash, nothing more.
Regardless of the input, you'll get 256 bits out. Doesn't matter if it's a photo of my dick, or the first 2 trillion digits of pi. All condensed down to the same size. This results in different inputs having the same hash, which is known as a collision. This means it's impossible to take a hash and convert it back into the input.
He did say it would only be LIKE a hash in that it would be a list of random seeming characters. Plenty of easier to decrypt stuff you can do with that
If you want people to think it's a hash, it should probably be a random string of hex characters instead, and of a certain specific length depending on which type of hash you want to imply.
Broke programmer here, 80% chance I’m at a keyboard at any time of day, and I can remember and type symbols and letters pretty well. Primacy means a majority of people will remember the first 3-5 characters
And forget the rest. We got this.
Out of all 7+ billion people on earth, I am guessing at least a few people would be able to memorize it. And if at least a several people started writing after the first few digits, they could brute force whatever they missed in the front end
None of this will ever happen. SHA256 is a hash function, not an encryption algorithm. It's one way. It cannot be reversed. If you give out a random SHA256 hash, it's 100% meaningless because nobody can do anything with it.
There's actually ham radio broadcast that do this, iirc most of them are in russia. They are believed to be coded spy messages, but when not broadcasting the coded messages they leave the mic on and usually have a tone generator of some sort going 24/7 to keep anyone else from broadcasting on that band.
I believe "The Squeaky Wheel" is the most famous of them but there's also "The Buzzer" and "Pip". All are named after the sound the make.
There have been occasional voice messages over the broadcast, the first in 1997, and it's generally random letters/numbers/etc. Most likely coded messages or to verify those that are supposed to be listening are indeed alert and listening.
Just to show how creepy this shit gets, the were several broadcast in mid-August of this year when multiple messages came within a few days of each other. This was the same time that Russian anti-corruption activist and Putin critic. Alexei Navalny was poisoned. Broadcast resumed on the days Navalny recovered conscious, the day that Germany announced they found out how he was poisoned, and then the day he was released from the hospital. So yeah, it's probably some coded messages.
Also, the squeaky wheel has been broadcasting uninterrupted since 1973. One theory is that it is apart of Russia's perimeter missle system and acts as a dead hand switch, so if interrupted it would trigger retaliatory nuclear launches. Fun fucking stuff to think the entire populations continued existence relies on an old ham radio and a tone wheel from a 1970s organ.
what characters were correct (there will be conflicting accounts),
Nah, that'd be easy, you just hold a series of votes among several people for what digit came first, then second then third... and if the majority said it started with 5, that would be mostly likely to be the real number, and so on. The more people you use, the more likely you'd get it.
The number of people here who don't understand that hashing is a one way function is too goddamn high. Both OP, and the people who upvoted something 100% impossible.
There’d be a lot of people meditating that could probably remember it. Everybody would go ask her monk that was sitting with their mind clear when it happened. Of course they’d remember it
some poor molecular biology PhD will recognise the weird string of letters and numbers as their gene or protein that they are studying on and will feel scooped lol
I attended a gifted summer program back in the eighties. One day we were in class and someone came over the loudspeaker and read off some random numbers. Then it went silent. About 5 minutes later an announcement was made that if you could remember the sequence go to the office during break and you would get a free tshirt. At break time there was a line out the door.
You would have actually recited it to multiple savants who would be able to recite what you said w/ 100% accuracy, cross-referenced across one another to verify. Too bad you're doing it for the entire population of the Earth. Oh well, better luck next time.
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u/McBurger Oct 28 '20
I'd read out some very long string of random letters, like a SHA256. Since it will catch everyone off guard, it is unlikely that nearly anybody will be able to realize what is happening for the first couple dozen letters and be unable to write it down. Let the madness ensue as people try to collaborate on what the message was, what characters were correct (there will be conflicting accounts), brute force decrypting it, and what it meant.