~/talk

That time I used Ruby to crack my Reddit password

Talkat RubyConf 2017 · 2017-11-15..11-17· [security, ruby]
slides:none on file

Locks a throwaway Reddit password into LetterMeLater then scrapes its search box behavior and builds a Ruby tool called lettermenow.rb using the Faraday gem and a captured cookie to query the site. Exploits a substring oracle: find a character not in the subject, extend forward and backward to recover the full 22‑char secret. The script runs 403 queries against the site (predicted ~432) and successfully retrieves the lost password.

AI-written summary · about

  1. 0:00Intro
  2. 0:38Addiction to useless websites
  3. 0:54No selfcontrol
  4. 1:19Odysseus
  5. 1:34What I did
  6. 4:13Two years later
  7. 4:43Logging back in
  8. 5:43Searching for the password
  9. 6:55substring queries
  10. 7:35the algorithm
  11. 10:21thats doable
  12. 10:53building the API
  13. 15:04building the algorithm
  14. 17:17finding the first letter
  15. 18:33bill forward
  16. 19:54build backward
  17. 22:32build forward false
  18. 24:29build backwards
  19. 25:12conclusion
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