Use the Encryption Key Bit Strength Calculator to compare your crypto keys and see what all those bits mean. Sometimes when looking at a configuration … Read More

It’s a single clean question: How many unique passwords or keys are possible using a certain design? That’s the keyspace, the answer to that question, … Read More

Password strength is length times complexity. That’s what you think, anyway. You think that swapping an ‘a’ for a ‘4’ makes your password secure or … Read More

Every time some site warns me that my password is weak because it doesn’t have a symbol in it, I’m pissed off, and I know … Read More

If we have two equal-length words, then the Hamming distance is a measure of their position differences. Sounds like a basic high-school math problem. But … Read More

You might say, “I am sending this packet across the network” or “I am sending this firmware update across this microcontroller,” hoping it arrives. “I … Read More

This page takes an ancient digital trick and makes it visible: a parity bit calculator. A parity bit are an extra bit added to your … Read More

Once you look at each bit in isolation, though, bit shifting looks easy: just multiply by powers of two (a left shift) or divide by … Read More

Bitwise XOR compares two number digit-by-digit; if they don’t match, it return a 1 (flipping a flag). That means that the XOR operator is good … Read More

In computing terms, the AND function is a strict form of logical calculation. Imagine it’s like a gatekeeper who poses one simple question for each … Read More