Tokens ====== Tokens are good for a single point in a single category. They are formed by prepending the category and a colon to the bubblebabble digest of 3 random octets. A token for the "merfing" category might look like this: merfing:xunap-motex Entropy ------- 3 octets provides 24 bits of entropy. This gives 16777216 possible tokens in each category. The longest contest yet run lasted 24 hours, which would give 2^24/24/60 = 11650 tokens per category per minute. I think this is a large enough pool to discourage brute-force attacks. Assuming /dev/urandom is as good as is claimed, brute-force would be the only way to attack it. Token server ------------ Sometimes it's a good idea to have certain puzzles run on a different machine than the server. For instance, something that loads down the CPU, or something that carries a high risk of local exploit. The token server listens on TCP port 1, issuing tokens encrypted with ARC4 (symmetric encryption). Here's how the transaction goes: C: category S: nonce (4 bytes) C: nonce encrypted with symmetric key S: token encrypted with symmetric key Token client ------------ The token client (in package "tokencli") runs as a daemon, requesting a new token every minute for each puzzle.