#Famous brute force attacks

[techsoulculture]

Brute Force Attacks: How to Protect Your WordPress Site 2023

An Introduction to Protecting Your WordPress Site from Brute Force Attacks Websites serve as both showcases for our online initiatives

[kotoryba]

#I have an idea but no time: what if "cultivation" in MDZS world really means... "farming"?

Based on this post: @dramatic-dolphin , I think you view things in the right direction! 😁❤️

Modern AU, where five powerful agricultural corporations practically rule the life of the country, dividing the workforce and resources for the best food production:

Cloud Recesses Inc. in Gusu — organic vegetables, strictly no pesticides, no chemical fertilisers; only straw mulching, complementary crops, attracting of natural predators for pests (ladybugs and other entomofags), natural irrigation etc. Centuries-long history of family business, no outside high-level management at all. Organised the famous agricultural academy, where share the knowledge about organic farming.

Lotus Cove Company in Yunmeng — fisheries, lotus growing, for seeds, roots and making the dyes (famous "Yunmeng Lotus Purple), river pearls and others; the company unites many small local farms and proposes them the processing and manufacturing of finished products and logistics. Regular searches of new initiative talents for company from local residents, but they keep the controlling stake in the main family.

Jin Golden Carp Corp. in Lanling - floristic and orchard business, have huge greenhouses with exotic fruits; M&A the lands from small landlords and enterprises by cheap prices and in general lead the tons of leasing and funding financial operations. Not clean reputation, but the huge PR&GR and legal departments helps with this a lot.

Butcher's Saber Ent. in Qinghe — meat and dairy production mostly. They propose the best salaries on local workforce market and due to that acquire a strong loyalty among the residents — but have severe corporation policies about the industrial espionage and thefts . And also BS Ent. has the strictest (except Cloud Recesses Inc.) safety standards for all product cycle.

Wen LLC in Qishan — broiler poultry farming, second big competitor of meat production after BS Ent. in region; breeding of new sorts and seed selling business (here we have uncontrollable usage of GMO, chemicals and pharmaceutical products, but all experiments keeps in secret from public). Due to the excessive usage of pesticides and fertilisation, they faced with pollution and soil depletion, therefore actively expanding their cultivation areas by raider attacks and property fraud. Payed the good salaries but have a catastrophic penalty system for keeping the mouths shut, but you must be Wen for obtaining even the middle management position.

Maybe the story begins, where the prominent student WWX (who thinks about agricultural technologies in non-traditional way, for example — builds robots and automatisation programs for harvesters machines, searches the solutions in nano-biology and something similar) entered the Gusu Lan academy as a part of sharing experience delegation from Lotus Cove.

Or from the moment, when Wens decided to attack their competitors, using the false accusations about owners, cyberattacks, sabotage and brute force?

Or when the little WWX's innovative company in the most infertile lands of Burial Mounds became way too bottleneck due to progressive researches of someone's brilliant mind, that the other big corporations collectively decided to wip the unwanted competitor from the market at all?

Maybe in the classic way, when WWX, who was in a coma for thirteen years after a huge fire in his laboratory, received the organ transplant and new face from unknown beneficiary — and waked up? With clear suspicions who was really behind this incident that also killed his shijie and her husband? Now he's unrecognisable for his friends and enemies and can investigate the case freely. Maybe, the little help from LWJ, the second heir of Cloud Recesses Inc., could be useful? They were just-step-before-good-friends in his previous life...

Do you know, guys, that there are real wars in agricultural business nowadays? Maybe, they are even more dangerous, than in imaginary magical world of jianhu...

[genillustrate]

"You'll always advance behind me" "Yes, sir!" "Psh, Sacro is better" "Yes, sir." I'm back. With more medieval times, oh yeah. I'm giving the name Michael to the Templar Knights and Gabriel to Hospitallers, just because they're biblical names, haha. The Knights Hospitaller started in Cyprus, and Cyprus is an island that was under Greek protection since ancient times, and in times of the Cruzades, Cyprus was under the protection of the Bizantine Empire, thus, Greece, that's why I'm giving him an appearence similar to that of my HC of Greece himself, just like Knights Templar looks just like France.

In my HCs, in his youth, France has a much more severe personality than in his adulthood, more similar to his germanic Frankish roots, than the Galloroman ones. It would be not until the Fall of the Bizantine Empire and the Reinassance that the Greek pushed with the enourmous exodus of Greek erudites that the Fall of Constantinople pushed through Europe, that France, and the rest of the continent, would have contact with the almost forgotten Grecoroman culture. And thus, the start of modern history. That's why I draw him all serious and violent in his youth; it's a reflection of the times. And he was always the vanguard of the attacks, because in that time the French were famous for their training, ferocity in battle and direct attacks. They were all about their honor in battle and their strategy were more like battles of brute force instead of strategic calculations; they were so strong they could afford the luxury, ha. Until they couldn't and had to adapt. And yes, Gilbert is very infatuated with Michael. I think it's canon that Templar knights was the one who teached him music, literature, to sing and the one who trained the most with him. And if not, well, now it is. Haha. They're hella cute, and I'm a sucker for first innocent love in baby years. I got sloppy with the colors but please bear with it, my back was killing me.

[disniq]

heyyy it's the tropes jason anon again back at it with a new question! what quotes from the comic books would you say describe jason & his philosophy well? thank you so, so much for helping me out ❤

Hi again Anon!

Full disclosure here; I don't think Jason has been written consistently enough over the years to necessarily have one set, inarguable philosophy. But I do think there are certain themes that carry through.

So;

Red Hood: Lost Days #3

This is, notably, the first time Jason kills. (I'm not including Garzonas, which is debatable, or the Cheer incident, which is a retcon) He finds out his hand-to-hand teacher has a barn full of drugged children about to be sex trafficked. The cops and politicians are in on it, making lawful justice extremely unlikely, but taking out one man takes out the system. Jason crosses that line for the first time because nobody else is there to stop it, and this is the most practical route.

He does not see it as "murder" because he feels it was deserved.

Red Hood: Lost Days #4

After that line has been crossed - as Talia points out here - a pattern emerges. It's notable that Jason does not kill all his dubiously skilled teachers, only the ones he deems the worst of the worst - people deliberately and repeatedly harming everyday people, especially children.

Jason reiterates this in his famous utrh speech. He's not talking about killing every rogue, every criminal. He's talking about killing the worst of the worst, the people who can finagle their way out of the system, the people the system fails to catch.

Under the Red Hood

It would be remiss of me not to include that one time Jason killed a nazi. Good for her dot gif.

To Jason, these people are beyond the regular means of justice, so he provides his own. He stops them from hurting anybody else.

This is not an exclusively post-resurrection opinion of his, either. Jason expressed similar thoughts during his Robin run.

Batman #422 (thank you @benbamboozled 😘)

This woman, Judy, baited her sister's murderer into attacking her too and then slits his throat. She's unrepentant, and Jason agrees with her decision. (Bruce, for the record, gives a speech on how "nobody is above the law" which is. An interesting stance for an illegally operating vigilante to take lmao)

It makes sense to me that Jason, as someone who has seen the system fail repeatedly (both as a civilian and as a hero), would have those kinds of doubts. The system doesn't always work. The system often fails the most vulnerable people.

When Bruce was failed by the Gotham justice system, he became his own extra-judicial system. When Jason is failed by both the justice system *and* Bruce's own vigilante system? Why wouldn't he do the same.

Unfortunately, this thread is mostly dropped for a while with the wave of writers who either actively hate Jason and try to make him capital E Evil or who are playing shameless self insert with him, but there are two more recent panels that I want to include too;

Task Force Z #12

So, in TFZ, Jason pushes who he thinks is Bane off a roof for killing Alfred. It... is not actually Bane, but instead the brainwashed former corpse of Gotham re-reanimated via comicbook science and. You know what, it doesn't matter. What does matter is that Jason regrets killing Gotham because he didn't deserve it, but reiterates that he will kill the real Bane if he gets a chance.

Jason sees killing as something he can do that others can't, that others maybe *shouldn't* have to do.

The Joker: The Man Who Stopped Laughing #8

And finally, I adore this little beat in JTMWSL. This is something Jason thinks about. He's not just some brute that doesn't understand that "killing is bad". He thinks about it, reads theory about it. He sees that between the black and white, there are many, many shades of gray.

He understands that people who don't kill with their own hands aren't necessarily good people - like these cops here, gleefully waiting for him to be killed in prison. And that the people who *do* get their hands dirty aren't necessarily the bad guys - like poor Judy.

And I think he probably varies where he places himself on that scale at any given moment.

[ewingstan]

I've been thinking about how Worm differs from Ward in it's approach to action, and I'm realizing that my dissatisfaction with the latter isn't just "the powers got more complicated." Its that action scenes are being used in completely different ways for completely different ends in each text, but are being paced the same way.

In Worm, each fight was a scenario where a problem was set out that seemed unbeatable given what the protagonists had at their disposal. The satisfaction of the fight was seeing the problem being "solved" through clever and unexpected use of the protagonists abilities. We get this time and time again:

The Undersiders plan for dealing with a few wards at the bank heist, and they get the full team plus the Dallon sisters—how will they make it out of a fight we know they're not prepared for? Time to change things up and go on the offensive!

The villains unexpectedly run into Lung during the ABB crackdown, and we've seen how much trouble he gave Taylor last time. How can she fight someone who seemingly no-sells all her powers? Time to get creative with how she uses her bugs!

Taylor's great at attacking an enemy's weak spots, but now someone with no weak points is on her doorstep. How can she fight off not just one of the feared Slaughterhouse Nine, but the one seemingly most built to no-sell her abilities?

Butcher needs to be dealt with, but she's incredibly powerful and anyone who kills her ends up inhereting a host of problems. How do we deal with her and her team? Hey, who left this emotion-manipulator-in-a-face-worse-than-death lying around for us to use?

It's like watching a puzzle being solved. Here's a clearly defined problem, here's how it's especially hard for Taylor because of her limitations, here's how she uses her powers and surroundings in clever ways to come out on top. It also means that basically every fight advances Taylor's character in some way—for it to be convincing, the audience needs to clearly believe in the limitation, which since we're in Taylor's head so much usually means she needs to belive in the limitation. So when we see her overcome this limitation, we're seeing how we (and she) were wrong about her. We learn that Taylor's willing to take insane risks and be agressive in the bank heist, we learn she can take advantage of other parahuman's powers in brutal ways during the Lung fight, we learn how she can use bugs in fully unnatural ways and inspire people to help her in her fight with Mannequin, we learn that she's thriving in the scarred state of Brockton Bay to the extent of utilizing its spankin-new suicide zone to deal with enemies, etc. This is part of why I never had much of a problem with the all-battles-no-breaks pacing that characterizes so much of Worm: it was never just battles! Every fight advanced Taylor's character an incredible amount!

This is a pretty common genre of action, but it requires a few things: namely, a thorough understanding of an enemies abilities. Its only fun to see a character outsmart a powerset if we understand the powerset. And we need to see the way an enemy is a problem for a character's apparent limitations if we want to appreciate how they're overcome. There's a reason why JJBA villains spend so much time monologuing about their stands, or why Sanderson spends so much time establishing exactly how each magic system works. If an enemies powers were vague and unknowable, then deafeating them wouldn't seem clever and limitation-overcoming, it would seem lucky or brute-force. So, Worm has Taylor teamed up with miss-can-explain-everyone's-deal and has her go up against villains famous enough for their powerset to be common knowledge.

But Ward isn't built for this type of clever power-munchining in its action. It's less Jojo's and more Berzerk, with its protagonist defeating her enemies though indomitable power and horrific force rather than cool tactics. Furthermore, Ward is interested in exploring the fog of war and how it affects violent engagements. Victoria is constantly thrown into situations where she has little idea of her enemies powersets, and defeats them without having ever fully grasped their intricacies. And part of this is because the powers in Ward are too complicated to be wholly "got" through simple demonstration, but also because she isn't approaching each fight with the goal of countering the enemy's specific schtick. She's trained to have specific tactics against different broad types, and doesn't typically analyze her opponent past the point of categorizing them as a breaker or a changer. And it makes sense! That style of engagement is gonna be common for anyone who doesn't have a Tattletale! (Kenzie is not a Tattletale. Her specific brand of all-seeing doesn't extend to being able to quickly give the lowdown on a powerset. It does extend to giving a full view of a battlefield and enemy positions, which helps facilitate the more "military engagement" mode for narrating action that Ward adopts). And unlike Taylor's useless-at-first-brush yet endlessly adaptable powerset, Victoria's powers are a blunt hammer that is very good at giving every enemy the nail treatment. Her action scenes are like watching a kaleidescope being smashed to pieces; we're constantly watching someone plunge into a bizzare sitation and smash their way out of it without really understanding what "it" was.

And to be clear I think this low-information style of action can lead to really cool moments. All we get about Mama Mathers for a while is "she can see you when you think about her" and "this is enough to keep the whole compound in line," so the reader's left to speculate on the actual extent of her abilities. And so when she starts driving people into violent spasming fits all of a sudden during the Fallen raid, its shocking and intense! You really get the sense that existing in the world of Parahumans means being subject to countless horrible and unknowable dangers you can't plan around, and when it works, it rocks!

But it also means that when fight scenes can only go on for so long before they start to drag. There's less satisfaction to seeing an enemy defeated without the puzzle component, and there's less character narrative being advanced in each fight outside of "what is Victoria willing to fight for/against" or "how much is Victoria willing to treat this enemy like a nail." Ward needs breaks in its action in a way Worm didn't, and when fights go on for the same length as they did in Worm it feels like Wildbow's using pacing that worked in one area without realizing how it could only work in that area. It might also be why I appreciate the quieter moments of inter-team banter and therapy sessions Ward is full of (besides those moments being, on the whole, really goddamn good).

[tvccreator]

Shadow Milk Cookie Headcanons

I've been working on a few stories with Shadow Milk, so I thought I would compile some of my headcanons to share with you all. Hope you enjoy! (It's a bit of a long read, so I apologize. ^^')

Personality:

Shadow Milk is a massive theatre nerd and poetry buff. He constantly makes theatre metaphors and will sometimes be caught quoting famous poets and plays.

He's dramatic as all hell. Shadow Milk thrives on being the center of attention and gets insanely jealous if cookies aren't paying attention to him. He'll often create havoc with his puppets just to get someone to notice him.

Shadow Milk's emotions tend to jump wildly between extremes if he gets worked up. He can easily go from calm and collected to raging psychopath in the span of milliseconds.

He loves to terrorize cookies. If he believes that he can get a reaction from you, you'll quickly find yourself being targeted by the Beast of Deception and his mind games.

His greatest weakness is his pride. He's completely egotistical and sees himself as above other cookies, especially due to his status as one of the five Beast Cookies. Flattery and praise will immediately distract him from what he's doing, and he's a sucker for discussing literature and theatre with anyone who approaches him asking for advice.

Shadow Milk is a naturally baked storyteller, and it shows especially when he's interacting with children. He can easily entertain children for hours on end if need be, and he'll even team up with Eternal Sugar to lull the rowdier children into sleep. (Although you really shouldn't have your kids near Shadow Milk in the first place.)

He's extremely stubborn. While not necessarily the leader of the Beast Cookies, the other four can't tell Shadow Milk what to do or when to do something... with a slight exception.

Eternal Sugar is the only cookie Shadow Milk will listen to, but even then, she only really ever tells him to calm down when he's going on a rampage.

On rare occasions, Shadow Milk will lock himself away in a private space and spend hours simply writing poetry or creating new screenplays. If you haven't heard from Shadow Milk for over thirty minutes, he's most likely working on a project. However, do not disturb Shadow Milk under any circumstances when he's writing. Whenever he gets interrupted, he has a 90% chance of losing his train of thought and will immediately attack the person who interrupted him.

In Battle:

Either a Bomber-type or a Ranger-type, in the Middle position. He specializes in hitting multiple times and in quick succession. While he's not all that strong physically, he makes up for it with his speed and stamina.

Since Shadow Milk used to be the Virtue of Knowledge before his corruption, he is insanely smart on the battlefield. He doesn't like going into battle personally, though, instead opting to sit on the sidelines and relying on strategy and his own silver tongue rather than brute-forcing it (like Burning Spice.)

Shadow Milk will try to use his power to send the entire battlefield into darkness. After all, it's a lot easier to lie to other cookies if they can't see the truth.

If he's rendered desperate enough, Shadow Milk will join the battle himself. However, if he does, consider yourself crumbled. He's not known as a Beast Cookie for nothing; his strength, speed, endurance, and stamina are inhumanely (un-cookie-ly?) high thanks to his former power as a Virtue, and once he enters the battlefield, Shadow Milk won't hesitate to drop all of his lies in favor of bashing cookies' heads in with his staff.

If he's fighting alongside the other Beast Cookies, he tends to tag-team with either Eternal Sugar or Burning Spice. When he's with Eternal Sugar, he uses his powers of deception to get cookies to lower their guard so Eternal Sugar can ambush them. When Shadow Milk and Burning Spice team up, Shadow Milk uses his reality-warping abilities to manipulate the landscape for Burning Spice to cause as much destruction as possible.

[stemandleafdiagram]

Modern Cryptography

(stemandleafdiagram long-form post!)

~ 2900 words

As you may have guessed, I love cryptography and ciphers even though I still don’t know much about them. I think classical ciphers are super interesting stuff and I love breaking them but I realised I knew nothing cipher-y after the end of World War 2, so I sought to rectify that!

(This is SO long - I got quite carried away (I do apologise), and as I wanted to cover so much here there are some concepts I don’t explain very thoroughly, but there are so many resources online if you want to learn more! When explaining how different forms of encryption work, I will often use the names commonly used by other cryptographers in my examples. Alice and Bob are two people trying to communicate, while Eve (an eavesdropper) is trying to intercept their messages.)

Symmetric Encryption

The start of modern cryptography is not a definite thing (obviously so, as the “eras” of cryptography are just labels people use to refer to them generally) but I decided to start my timeline for modern cryptography in the 1960s, as during this time, research projects at the American company IBM (International Business Machines) led to the creation of a cipher called the Lucifer cipher. 

This cipher was one of the first block ciphers to be made. A block cipher is a cipher that operates on blocks of 128 bits at a time. This is in contrast to a stream cipher, which encrypts 1 bit of data at a time. (In a way, you could consider classical ciphers stream ciphers) If the plaintext (un-encrypted data) is smaller than 128, padding schemes will add random data to it to make it up to 128. Modes of operation define how large amounts of data are encrypted. For example, the blocks of data can be encoded separately, or maybe the encryption of one block is affected by the previous encoded block of data.

The Lucifer cipher underwent a lot of alterations, and eventually the National Bureau of Standards adopted this altered version of Lucifer as the Data Encryption Standard, or DES, in 1977. Some of the alterations made that led to DES were actually quite controversial! For example, the key size in Lucifer was 128 bits, but only 56 in DES, which worried people who thought it would have been easier to brute force as it was shorter. It’s actually rumoured that the NSA (National Security Agency) did this so that the DES wasn’t too strong for them to break. Another change they added was the inclusion of something called S-boxes, which are effective at protecting against a form of attack called differential cryptanalysis. What I found really cool was that its effectiveness wasn’t talked about until much after, which suggests that the NSA knew about differential cryptanalysis 13 years before this information went public!

The DES is no longer secure enough for modern use, and in 2001 was replaced by the AES, or the Advanced Encryption Standard, which is its direct successor and is still used today. The reason that AES is more secure than DES is that the algorithm itself is more complex, but more importantly it uses longer key lengths. Using keys that are 128, 192, or 256-bit long means that the encryption is much stronger than using the 56-bit DES.

Lucifer, DES, and AES are all symmetric ciphers as well as being block ciphers. This means that the key used to encrypt the plaintext is the same key that is used to decrypt the data. Only some block ciphers are known publicly. DES and AES are the most famous of the lot, but other ones such as IDEA, Twofish, and Serpent exist too. 

As a whole, encrypting with block ciphers is slower as the entire block must be captured to encrypt or decrypt, and if just 1 mistake is made the whole block can be altered. But, they are stronger than other ciphers. Each mode of operation also has its own pros and cons. If each block is encoded by itself then they can be encrypted in parallel (which is faster), but it’s prone to cryptoanalysis as two identical blocks of plaintext would produce two identical blocks of ciphertext, therefore revealing patterns. The other ways are much more complex and take more time to encrypt but are more secure. 

For symmetric encryption to be used, both parties need to agree on the same key for the message to be shared secretly, which is a massive problem. How can the key be transferred securely?

Key Exchange

A year before the implementation of DES, in 1976, another massive breakthrough was made. Researchers Whitfield Hellman and Martin Diffie created the Diffie-Hellman key exchange, which was a method to share encryption and decryption keys safely across an unsecured network. The way it works depends on one-way functions. Typically in maths, most functions are two-way, as using a function on a number is pretty easy to undo. However, Hellman and Diffie found out that while multiplying two prime numbers was very easy, factorising the product down to its primes again was excruciatingly difficult, and the difficulty only increases as the numbers get bigger.

Say Alice and Bob are trying to share a key using the Diffie-Hellman exchange. Firstly, both of them need to execute a function in the form G^a mod P. P must be prime, and G and P are shared publicly so Alice and Bob can agree on them. The numbers are massive (usually 2048 bits) to make it harder to brute force, and they are generated randomly. Alice and Bob each choose different numbers for a, and run their functions. They will get different answers and they share their answers with each other publicly. (This is the public key) Then, Alice and Bob run another function in the form G^a mod P, but G is set to the other person’s answer. The value of a and P stay the same, and Alice and Bob arrive at the same secret answer. The secret answer can then be used to encrypt the message! (This is the private key)

Now, let’s say Eve wanted to find out what the key was. She intercepts their messages, but even though she has the exact information Alice and Bob shared with each other, she doesn’t know what the secret key is unless she solved the original equation, making this key exchange very secure! Modular arithmetic (the mod P part of the equation) is notoriously hard to reverse. If 2048-bit numbers are used, then brute forcing it requires 2^2048 numbers.

Asymmetric Encryption

The Diffie-Hellman key exchange was huge - I mean, any technology created 50 years ago that’s still in use must be pretty good, but it really only shone for sharing keys, not for encryption. For example, the issue with sending communication such as emails using Diffie-Hellman was that both parties needed to be online for a key to be generated as information needs to be mutually shared in the process, so you couldn’t just send an email using it whenever you wanted, which was a shame. However, one particular thing it did lead to was the invention of asymmetric encryption.

In 1977, the idea of public key cryptography (also invented by Diffie) came to fruition in the form of RSA. Named after its creators (Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman), the RSA works by all users having a public key, which is accessible by everyone, so anyone wanting to send that user a message just needed to search for it. The sender encrypts the message with the recipient’s public key, and then when the recipient comes online they are able to decrypt it with their own private key that’s not shared with anyone. It also uses an one-way function like the Diffie-Hellman exchange, albeit a more complex one. RSA is still used today for things like sending messages or visiting secure websites, and the keys tend to be 2048 or 4096 bits long so that they are hard to break. 1024-bit RSA was disallowed in 2013.

Encrypting via public key and decrypting via private key is great for keeping sensitive information safe, but what if you encrypted with your private key and the message was decrypted with your public key? The purpose of this encryption is to prove the sender is who they say they are - if the public key can’t decrypt the message then either the wrong key was used or the message has been meddled with in transit. To keep the message secure the sender could encrypt with their private key and also the recipient’s public key so only they could decrypt and read it. If the message is particularly long, the digital signature can be applied to a hash of the original message, rather than the whole thing. The RSA was the first to have this dual functionality.

So, there we go - the two main encryption types used today: symmetric and asymmetric. Symmetric encryption is useful for large amounts of data in particular, while asymmetric is more secure, but is slower and requires more resources and therefore can be more expensive. In practice, many secure systems will use both symmetric and asymmetric ciphers. Although, the actual security of a message comes down to the length of the key used - the longer or more complex it is, the more secure the encryption is. As the number of bits increases, the total number of arrangements for these bits increases exponentially. The IBM website states that a 56-bit key could be brute forced in around 400 seconds, a 128-bit key would take 1.872 x10^37 years, while a 256-bit key would take 3.31 x10^56 years.

Going Quantum

It goes without mention as to how important modern cryptography is. These encryption methods are used to keep confidential information such as credit card details, messages, and passwords safe for users like you and me, but also maintains government security on a national level. It’s also vital for cryptocurrency and digital signatures (as mentioned before), as well as browsing secure websites.

A big threat to current cryptographic standards is the development of quantum computing, which are computers based on principles of quantum mechanics. I won’t go into detail on how quantum computers work, but using quantum mechanics they are able to do massive numbers of calculations simultaneously. Although quantum computers already exist, they aren’t powerful or capable enough to threaten our current encryption algorithms yet. But, researchers suggest that they could be able to within a decade. People could use a technique called “store now, decrypt later”, where they keep currently encrypted messages so that they can decrypt them when quantum computers are available. This could cause many problems in the future, particularly if they involve secrets on an international level.

Quantum mechanics can also be used in cryptography as well! Quantum cryptography, originally theorised in 1984 by Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard, can be used to exchange keys even more securely than Diffie-Hellman, and is called QKD, or Quantum Key Distribution. The reason it’s so incredible is that data that’s secured using it is immune to traditional cryptographic attacks. Now, I’m no quantum physicist (or any type of physicist!) but I will try my best to explain how it works. It works by sending photons, which are light particles, from the sender (eg. Alice) to the receiver (eg. Bob). These photons are sent at different orientations and Bob can measure the photon’s polarisation when he gets them.

Let’s say that photons can be in a vertical, horizontal, or one of the two diagonal orientations. We can pass them through a polarised filter to find out what orientation they are in. The filters are also specifically oriented. A vertical filter would let the vertical photons through, block the horizontal ones, and let the diagonal ones in 50% of the time but at the cost of the ones that pass through being reoriented. Therefore, when a particular photon successfully passes through, it’s impossible to know whether it was originally diagonal or vertical. This is important as it means that it’s possible to detect if someone else has been eavesdropping as the polarisations would have been changed.

Bob can use two measurement bases to receive the photons Alice sent. One will capture vertical and horizontal orientations, and one will capture diagonal ones. Bob has no idea what orientation Alice used for each photon, so he switches between his bases randomly, and will get it wrong some of the time. This is fine, as Alice and Bob then compare to see which ones Bob got right, and the ones he correctly guessed are used as a key (each photon representing 1 bit). The key can then be used for other encryption methods, such as AES.

The reason this works is that if Eve wanted to pry, she has to guess which base to use as well when she intercepts the photons (so she will also make mistakes), but she has no way of checking whether her records are correct or not, unlike Bob. It’s impossible for her to obtain the key as well. What’s more, when she guesses wrong she will change the photon polarisation, so Alice and Bob know that she’s eavesdropping.

Quantum cryptography would have huge security benefits if implemented on a wide scale due to its ability to prevent eavesdroppers, and the fact that it would be resistant to quantum computers. However, it is still in development. One key drawback is the specific infrastructure that is needed, and fiber optic cables have a limited range. This means that the number of destinations the data could be sent to is limited, and the signal cannot be sent to more than 1 recipient at any time.

As well as quantum cryptography, the NIST (The National Institute of Standards and Technology) and other cryptographers are working on other cryptographic algorithms that would stay secure even in the face of quantum computers. Ideas include lattice-based cryptography, hash-based cryptography, and code-based cryptography among others but none of them are at a point where they can actually be implemented yet.

However, one new idea that isn’t post-quantum but is gaining traction is Elliptic Curve Cryptography. Elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) is a form of asymmetric encryption that uses different points on an elliptic curve graph to generate keys in a more efficient manner than traditional methods. It creates shorter encryption keys, which means that less resources are needed while making the keys harder to break simultaneously. Improving the security of current systems just involves lengthening the keys, which slows down the encryption/decryption process, so the fact that ECC doesn’t need to do this gives it a big advantage. It is already used by the US government, iMessage, and Bitcoin, among others. 

Sidenotes

With the maths of these encryption methods being so strong, one key vulnerability is the people that utilise these methods, which is no surprise. Side channel attacks are a way to break cryptography by using information physically leaked from it. One attack, called a TEMPEST attack, is a technique that can pick up electromagnetic transmissions from a device as far as 300m away. These are often done by the FBI, but honestly can be done quite easily by some nerd who has some money to spare and can sit in a car outside your window. By monitoring the radiation emitted from your computer screen, the attacker can spy on you and your data. Another thing that can be monitored is your power consumption. Cryptography is energy intensive, and this attack has been able to recover RSA private keys in testing. Other forms of attacks include measuring amount of time required to encrypt data, which can perhaps be used to find factors or exponents. To combat this, encryption methods can add timing noise as a countermeasure. Or, an attacker can listen to someone type to find out their passwords, but to distinguish different key presses a sophisticated machine learning model is needed. Side channel attacks have actually been around for ages but its use has been severely limited in that the attacker needs to be physically close to the victim. They could get easier with time, however, as smartphones and drones can act as microphones remotely.

Another cool thing I haven’t covered yet are hash functions, which can take in an input and map it to a string of characters that’s random but unique to the original data. The output is called a hash digest or hash value. A good hash function will mean that no two different inputs will have the same hash value, and all outputs are the same length, making it hard to guess original text length. It’s vital for digital signatures and storing passwords securely.

Finally, if anyone managed to get to the end, then thank you! I really love cryptography and I find it astounding that we’ve been able to develop it into such a complex yet intrinsic part of daily life. Honestly, I had so much fun researching for this post! Encryption and cybersecurity and the future of computing is so interesting and I’m really glad I decided to write this :)

Final final note you should totally go and read the Code Book by Simon Singh! Trust me trust me it’s so good...

[vigilante24ish]

The Shadow Queen of Tywin Lannister

Summary:

After the death of his wife, Tywin Lannister knew he would never remarry. However, when the relationships between Targaryens & Lannisters are put into question, marriage seems to be the only choice left. To his surprise, it is he who will get married to none other than the King’s younger sister.

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Pairing: Fem!OC x Tywin Lannister Chapter Warnings: None

Previous - Chapter 35: The Royal Family Visits Winterfell Next - Chapter 37: Revenge is a Dish Best Served Cold

Chapter 36: Masks & Lies All Around

Winterfell – The North – The day after Robert’s Visit

By the time the sun was fully up above the North and Winterfell, the main courtyard had been occupied by the Stark Children. As per usual, they wished to practise their sword skills, sparring with one another.

This time, they had a small crowd as members of the Lannister family happened to watch from different positions. They were not truly interested in the show but were passing by and chose to see it, especially when a specific Lion chose to join the training.

Somehow, young Trystan had managed to persuade the Stark children to allow him to participate.

When it was time for a spar, Jon backed down.”Bastards cannot harm heirs, Ser. No matter what family they come from,”

“Well, it says nothing of an heir against another”, Robb had commented right after, feeling a sense of adrenaline at the thought of sparring with the young Knight.

Trystan seemed more than happy to accept his challenge, and both picked up a training sword made of thick, heavy wood. After both had fixed their positions, they started to spar, and the sound of wood against wood echoed across the open area.

Robb was very good with the sword, having been practising for years with many knights and even his father. He had a good stance, and his attacks were more strength-based than his opponent's.

However, the Half-Lion was faster and easily blocked his attacks or dodged them, making the young Direwolf stumble forward a few times.

Unlike many knights, Trystan did not fight based on brute strength but had a more flexible style. He did block and attack with the right footwork, using his height when he could, but he often chose to dodge and tire out his opponent.

“What kind of fighting is that? Never seen someone moving so much,” Arya commented as she watched, glancing at her brother Jon.

“A more versatile one,” A new voice said as Tyrion joined them, on the other side of the Stark girl. “My brother follows his mother’s path, choosing to be faster and tiring his opponents than using brute strength like a barbarian.”

“My brother does not fight like a barbarian,” Arya quickly argued, rushing to defend Robb.

Tyrion smirked. “Who said I was talking about your brother?” he asked, making her look to the side in embarrassment and annoyance that she fell for it. “I mostly referred to knights in King’s Landing, especially some of the Kingsguard. Honestly, when they train, it makes you wonder if they do try to disarm their opponents or just test who can push the other the furthest away,” his words amused the two stark children, and he took pride in it. “Anyways, my younger brother can fight like a knight and rely purely on strength, but I can see he is more in the mood to be less professional today.”

Surprisingly, Robb seemed amused by the whole sparring and he kept attacking; trying to bring his opponent down despite their tricks. Trystan, would sometimes switch and try to par him with strength or force him to take a step back but it was clear from the smirk upon his lips that he was enjoying it too.

“You mentioned his mother. You mean the former Princess?” Arya asked after another silent moment of observing, her eyes never leaving the two elder boys.

“Just don’t call her like that when she is around, she will not like it,” the dwarf joked. “But yes, my good-mother does have a surprising record in combat for a woman.”

Both Starks knew all too well of the famous Targaryen who married the Old Lion back when the Mad King still ruled. It was known that she led men into battle, with the biggest being the one in the Trident, where her nephew perished under Robert’s war hammer, and she was taken prisoner.

Arya was personally inspired by Visenya’s past since not many women were known or even allowed to carry weapons, let alone fight in wars. She often wished she could have the same freedom, to learn how to fight without anyone daring to judge her due to her gender, as they did every day.

The young Stark hoped one day to meet the Dragoness, maybe ask her for some advice, or even ask to be trained by her. Although she doubted she would meet her anytime soon.

They would leave for King’s Landing the following day since her father had chosen to accept the offer and become Hand of the King. Based on the stories, ever since Robert ascended to the throne, Visenya did not step into King’s Landing, even when Cersei gave birth.

Rumours said that there was bad blood between those two, and if they were in the same room together, one of the two would try to murder the other. Based on the impression Arya got of Robert, she was even more certain that Visenya would win in a fight.

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Ironically, the man of her thoughts was standing on one of the wooden platforms that acted as outside corridors between parts of the castle. He was leaning on the wooden railing, holding it with both hands in an iron grip while Ned was by his side.

“Is he the boy?” Ned asked his friend, seeing the glare Robert sent to the teenager as he sparred with Robb.

“Unfortunately. One of the few Dragonspawns left,” he said, making the Stark Lord arch an eyebrow.

His choice of words was odd, considering that there were only two Targaryens left, and they were both in Westeros. Unless there was something more that Robert had not told him yet or refused to tell him, Net knew he would have to find out.

“He is not really a Dragon, only a half, and he doesn’t look like one either”, Eddard said.

He knew Robert was bloodthirsty when it came to the Targaryens, and he would easily murder kids since, in his eyes, they were only ‘dragon spawns’. However, he hoped that because Trystan was different, he would be safe from his rage.

“Does it matter, Ned? They all carry the same cursed blood. I wouldn’t even have him around me, but Cersei kept insisting, wishing to be around her family, as if she didn’t have enough of them around,” the King said, clearly not happy with how his wife ended up winning that argument.

“He seems like a nice boy, intelligent and mannered.”

Robert felt the need to roll his eyes and ended up scoffing instead. “He is. He is the perfect young knight, the perfect mannered heir, the perfect intelligent man,” he said, venom dripping from his every word. “He is just too perfect, and he knows it. I swear, Ned, when he looks at me with those eyes of his, I know he is planning how to kill me. I can just feel that he will be my demise because the Gods are that cruel with their jokes.”

Ned remained silent momentarily, his eyes never leaving the two teenage boys. However, his thoughts trailed back to the events of last night when he and Cat received a letter from her sister claiming that Robert’s life was in danger.

After Jon Arryn was poisoned, Lysa suspected that the King was next and that an assassination attempt would be made against him.

Truthfully, Ned thought it was all just the words of a grieving woman, and no harm would truly come to Robert. However, with how he talked about Trystan, he could not help but think.

He doubted the boy would ever plan to take down the King since the Lannisters would not benefit from it. The crown owned too much money, and Cersei married the King. Yet again, Visenya was not a Lannister by blood, and she could have her agenda.

It was known to almost all that the Dragoness had a unique way of thinking and that she had not seen Robert since the loss at the Trident. Perhaps she was thinking of exacting her revenge for the murder of her nephew, although she did have the Old Lion above her head at all times.

Thus, in his mind, the chances for her to be the culprit without even stepping into King’s Landing in over 16 years were quite slim.

“Why have you kept him around, then? Why not send him back to Casterly Rock?” he finally asked Robert as he focused on the boys.

By now, the sparring had ended with Robb on the ground, but there was no bad blood between them. Trystan had offered his hand to his opponent, and the two of them seemed to share a joke as Arya and Jon joined them.

“Because he has done nothing wrong so far to give me an excuse. He has been that perfect soldier, and Cersei would make my life hell if I dared to send him away without a proper reasoning,” Robert admitted, clearly annoyed by the fact that both his hands were tied behind his back at the whole thing.

━─━────༺༻────━─━

Nearly an hour since Trystan befriended the Stark kids, grave news found them all. One of the younger Stark boys, Bran, was in a coma after falling from the top of one of the towers.

Bran was known to climb the steep stones on the outside walls of the tall towers, spending hours enjoying the view and never falling. The sudden fall was suspicious in the heart and the back of Cat’s mind, who was busy crying over her son.

The boy was alive but unresponsive, the Maester not knowing whether he would ever wake up or not.

After that, the mood turned grim in Winterfell as the Starks withdrew themselves to handle the shock and perhaps started fears of losing their brother.

Trystan was the first to offer his condolences to Lady Stark, having chosen to do so before heading to meet his family for lunch.

Upon entering their guest dining area, he found Jaime and Cersei already seated with Tommen. Tyrion was nowhere to be found, but neither was Joffrey.

“Oh good, the golden boy has chosen to grace us with his presence,” Cersei said, clearly not in a happy mood.

Yet again, when was she ever truly happy? Trystan could barely think of a single moment that she was, at least in the years he spent with her in King’s Landing.

“Greetings to you too, sister, brother, Myrcella, Tommen.” At the last one, he moved behind the boy and used two fingers to touch a sensitive spot on his sides, making him ticklish.

“Uncle”, he called between giggles, always enjoying the teasing of the younger Lion. “Sit with me,” he said once he was free from the tickling fingers.

“Well, if my good nephew wishes me to. Who am I to refuse him?” he said and sat at Tommen’s left.

The boy chuckled while Cersei rolled her eyes at the sight. Trystan was sometimes too good at what he did, and that felt so fake in her eyes. Perhaps it was not, but she could not help it as a part of her always had jealousy for the younger Lion.

He spent most time with their father. He was the future heir of Casterly Rock and their father’s pride, at least in her eyes. Yet, sometimes, his presence was soothing to her since he was family.

He looked like them, and he did strive for the same approval from their father. The kids loved him, at least the younger ones. It was good for them to have some proper male role models in their lives who were not a drunk Imp or a horny fat stag.

“Bring me some bacon, black,” a familiar voice said as everyone had started eating, or at least Trystan had since he had arrived later than the others. The order was addressed to a Lannister soldier, who acted as their servant for the duration of the meal.

He then picked up little Tommen, earning giggles of approval from the boy and placed him just a tad to the side so he could sit next to Jaime.

“Little brother,” Jaime greeted him.

“Beloved siblings.”

There was a small moment of silence as Tyrion got himself some food, ignoring the silent glares from his sister.

“Is Bran going to die?” Myrcella suddenly asked from her position next to her mother at one side of the table, across from all the males.

“Apparently not,” Tyrion said, since he was the last to see the Maester and overhear the latest news.

“What do you mean?” Cersei asked him.

“The Maester said the boy might live,” he explained as the twins shared a silent look between them.

“Well then, at least some good news on the table,” Trystan said, trying to change the mood and pretend he did not just notice that twin-mental communication between Cersei and Jaime.

“I wouldn’t call them good news, Trystan. I wouldn’t even call them mercy, letting a child linger in such pain,” Cersei argued.

“Only the Gods know for certain. All the rest of us can do is pray,” Tyrion commented, silencing the table once again. He continued to eat, observing each one of his family members.

Myrcella and Tommen were clueless, just happy to hear their latest friend would survive. They only had one night together, but due to their close age, they had gotten a little bit close.

Cersei was obviously bothered by something, evident by her lack of eating and the glances she stole at Jaime's direction. Her twin seemed to be slightly uncomfortable suddenly, looking more at his plate and finding his food more interesting.

Trystan, on the other hand, seemed not to take his eyes off his older siblings. Chewing slowly and silently, one could see gears spinning inside that pretty head of his as he studied them; perhaps even made theories that no one else would think of making.

Not liking the silence and, of course, not missing the chance to annoy his sister, Tyrion chose to speak again. “The Charms of the North seem entirely lost on you.”

“I still can’t believe you are going,” she said, choosing to change the subject of the discussion. “It is ridiculous, even for you”, she added, referring to his decision to visit the Wall.

If one were to look at the scene, one would suspect that Cersei was the leader of the lion siblings. Sitting in the middle chair, across from all the men, and always having the last word on things.

More than once, people would see Cersei in command, with only Tyrion brave and stupid enough to rile her up when bored. It was an interesting thing to notice, perhaps to study, because the dynamic could easily be swift if one of the males chose to try to stand their ground.

One would even wonder how the dynamic would change if the parents were present. If not Visenya, then Tywin certainly would take the charge without any protest from anyone, for he was still the Head of the Lion Pride.

“Where is your sense of wonder?” he asked, glancing at his siblings. “The Greatest structure ever built, the intrepid men of the Night’s Watch. The windy abode of the white walkers,” he teased Tommen, pretending he was attacking him. He then turned to the youngest of the siblings. “Trystan, back me up here. You are the biggest History worm book amongst all of us. You should feel my sense of wonder.”

The teenager felt every green pair of eyes on him, but he was so used to them by now that he felt no effect. He pierced his food with his fork a few times.

“It is one of the greatest accomplishments. Although controversially, the fight against the First Children is not highly viewed by certain people,” he said, glancing up at them and mostly at Tyrion. “I do understand your fascination, brother, but I do not share it. The wall is too north, it is impregnable, and whatever is on the other side is none of our concern. If we are to focus on something, it's better to focus on something closer to us and of greater importance, such as most of the South,” he reminded many, for a moment sounding too much like their father.

The rest of the siblings exchanged a look, a shiver going down their spines as a reaction to his words. It was not his words but the tone and voice behind them that had an eerie resemblance to what their father would say.

While away from his influence, there were times they looked at Trystan and could see a younger version of Tywin staring back at them. It was unsettling, to say the least, but thankfully, such moments were always short-lived and rare.

“Tell me you are not thinking of taking the Black?” Jaime asked him, amusing Trystan.

“Do they even allow dwarves to take it?” he could not help but ask, his mood shifting to a less serious one, but the amusement he had when he was around the Stark Children was long gone.

“Even if they did, can you imagine? Me, going celibate? The Whores would go begging from Dorne to Casterly Rock,” he joked, making his two brothers smirk as they enjoyed his joke; they did almost all of his jokes. “No, I just want to stand on top of the wall and piss off the edge of the world.”

“And here I thought for once you were interested in the history and creation of a place that is not a whorehouse,” the younger Lion commented, making Jaime chuckle while he simply kept smirking in personal victory.

Your turn next time, his eyes said to his eldest brother while ignoring the annoyed look of Cersei. She never approved of Jaime or Trystan encouraging jokes with the little monster.

“The children do not need to hear your filth,” the Lioness said, leaning forward and almost ready to pounce at him. She then glanced at Trystan. “Do not encourage him either to continue, either of you.” Her eyes moved to Jaime since she knew he would also get the chance if it was given to him. “Come.”

Without another word, her two children stood up after her and followed suit, leaving the three male Lannisters behind.

“Even if the boy lives, he will be a cripple, a grotesque. Give me a good, clean death every day.” Jaime commented, earning an eye roll from Trystan. “Oh, don’t roll your eyes at me. You and I both know you would take the same option as me.”

Trystan did not reply and simply lifted his hands faintly up in the air. Do not involve me in this.

“Speaking for the grotesques, I’d have to disagree.” Tyrion started the mood seriously.

The youngest of the three, knowing where this would lead, chose to stand up. “I will let you two continue this discussion since I do sense some personal unattended feelings,” he said and emptied the rest of his water into his mouth. I will see you all later on.”

━─━────༺༻────━─━

As it was planned, the next day they left Winterfell with more people than they had come. Eddard Stark, his daughters Sansa and Arya, would join them at King’s Landing while Caitlyn would return with Robb, the youngest Stark and the comatose Bran.

One would expect the trip to go smoothly, especially since Tyrion had joined Jon Snow and the rest for the Wall; but no. A lot of incidents took place, most in a single day.

Joffrey had found Arya fighting with sticks with the butcher’s son and had attacked the boy to satisfy his sadistic needs, knowing very well his opponent could not hit him without risking execution.

In the end, Arya defended the boy, disarmed Joffrey, and even threw his sword into the Ruby River, which Trystan found Ironic considering the importance of that river to his mother and family.

Of course, there was the dire wolf of the young Stark that had attacked Joffrey to defend her master, and in the end, she was set free to escape being butchered by the soldiers.

Yet, the spoiled prince demanded justice for the new scars on his arm, and the result was that Sansa’s obedient dire wolf was killed instead.

It was a very bad beginning, resulting in the rest of the 1.5-month trip continuing with thick tension among many.

Arya and Sansa did not talk, since the eldest had defended Joffrey. In her eyes, the kid was the perfect prince, handsome and kind, unaware of his true, sadistic personality.

The loss of her direwolf, or better say, murder, had crushed the spirits of the eldest Stark for a few days. Trystan tried to comfort her once, but was pulled away by Cersei. Since the girl was to be betrothed to Joffrey, it was up to the boy to comfort her.

Ridiculous. He has no sense of sympathy or empathy whatsoever. He cannot even fake it to save his life, the youngest Lion had thought but said nothing out loud, knowing it was a lost battle.

Instead, he spent his days riding in front of everyone, and at night, he would read or send letters to his parents, keeping them informed of what was taking place and how their grandchildren were growing up.

He knew that if things ever became too much, at least their father would come and tighten the leashes around their necks; and this was the only thing that kept his patience going when he was faced with such things.

That and his father’s advice, which was based on his personal experience as Hand of a bad and mad King for 14 years.

“The court is made up of fools, and you will witness things that will test your patience and your temper. With that fool as King and Cersei in power, it is set to be a catastrophe. However, it is wise to know when to interfere and when to just let things happen. Sometimes, our interference might only worsen the situation and bring no desired results.”

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Casterly Rock – Westerlands – The following day after the Direwolf incident.

Visenya stood over her desk in her office, one hand playing with the ends of the belt around her silken red robe as it fell loosely around her body. Winter was slowly coming, but the WesterLands were still quite warm, allowing her to move around and sleep with thinner clothes.

Her other hand was placed on the desk for support as her amber eyes fell on one of the two letters spread in front of her. She had just received both of them, the difference being a few minutes, and Tywin was bathing, so she had the chance to read them first.

Letting out a sigh, she pushed herself to stand at her full height and closed her eyes momentarily, thinking. After a minute of pure silence, she grabbed one of the two letters with one hand and moved it above the flame of the candle she used for better lighting.

She held the parchment and watched as the edge of it caught on fire. The ember flames quickly devoured the material as it wrinkled and turned ash grey, barely holding it together.

She kept holding it, waiting and not making a move even as the flames came too close to her fingers. She felt the heat but no pain, no injury even as the flames licked the skin of her thumb and index finger.

Soon enough, the paper was mere ash that she blew away before looking at her fingers. There was not a single hint of damage, no irritation; nothing. It was as if the flame never reached her, never been close to her skin but it had been.

She moved the same hand, grabbed the letter that had Trystan’s neat handwriting on it and moved around the desk. She used her other hand to grab the candle, heading for the door as she let the room slowly become dark while she walked away from the only source of light.

Yet, the moon's light did shine through the glass of the closed window and shone above the desk. A small, single thing seemed to reflect its silver light: a single silver coin with the three-headed dragon engraved on either side.

[acy-art]

(REUPLOAD) My MHA oc lol more under the cut!

Alicia (Alice) Carroll is a Mexican-British Hero-in-Training. Her parents, her, and her little brother moved to Japan from the South-Western USA after the retirement of Allmight to try and help fill in his large absence, and to aid in the rescue efforts happening on the site of the battle.

Alice transferred into UA into class 1-B through the foreign exchange student program, though with some difficulty due to the language and time-zone differences, and thankfully has made friends. Her little brother was transferred to a local elementary school and quickly gained a reputation for being a trouble-maker, due to his quirk allowing him to slip through walls, smell and hear better than his classmates, and have a powerful bite. In addition, because his big sister is making her way towards being a hero, he's already started crafting a hero persona; El Chupacabra.

Her parents are having lots of success integrating into the local hero scene, especially with rescue teams. Her mom's (hero name La Llorona) quirk activated after she disappeared in a flash flood. She is functionally a ghost, being able to walk through solid objects, move completely silently, and phase in and out of corporeality, though she has the ability to interact and touch the living. She also has a slight silver tongue, where she can influence people to stop or freeze in their place when she cries, but that may just be because she's literally a ghost and that's terrifying to encounter unexpectedly. Physical weapons don't tend to hurt her unless they are blessed. Otherwise, she can only be hurt by attacks made directly from living flesh (such as a punch or kick). Her dad's (hero name Barghest) quirk gives him a monstrous appearance, similar to that of an anthropomorphic black dog or werewolf. Along with this he has a heightened sense of smell and hearing, a powerful bite, a high stamina, and twice the strength of a normal man. He's also massive and eats enough for two people. He sometimes enjoys eating stuff from the trash because of course he does he's a gigantic dogman. Yes he does dig holes in the yard and you can get him to fetch. Also, he's related to Lewis Carroll. Just straight up actually related to him. Together, they are able to scout, track, and take down opponents. They also make an amazing rescue team, as La Llorona's non-corporeality and Barghest's senses combine to make quick work of locating and often rescuing people trapped in buildings or rubble.

Back to Alice! Alice's quirk, which she calls Cheshire Cat, allows her to make some or all parts of herself invisible. In addition, she has the ability to enthrall people when she goes only partially invisible, but this power is relatively weak, and she doesn't use it often. With training, she can become completely incorporeal. The invisibility extends to anything that contains her DNA, but the further the item is from her, the less control she has over it. Because of this, her hero costume is made out of fiber spun from her fur. Her fighting style is stealthy and cat-like, prioritizing speed and misdirection over brute force. She's trained in hand-to-hand combat by her dad and uses her invisibility to gain the upper hand in fights.

Alice is a huge horror movie buff. She especially loves slasher horror from the 80's and 90's, but is always a sucker for new stuff, especially if it's weird and a little goofy. She loves to customize her clothes and customize things for her friends too. She initially designed her hero costume with blue and white stripes, but realized it looked like the Argentine flag and switched it out for the more blatantly Disney pink and purple, which she initially didn't love, but it's been growing on her.

Back in Mexico, her Tia (hero name La Catrina) is actually super famous. She has the ability to rapidly grow and wilt plants and is basically one of the top heroes there due to her skill and professionalism. She uses her abilities in a sort of AOE swarm, ensnaring anyone who might cause trouble.

uhh thats all for now i'll add more when i think of it

[houseofthelilypads]

Shrek isn't just a movie picking at of Disney, it's a movie picking at white supremacy.

Notice how all the villains were white people? Excluding Goldilocks & Death, who were antagonists/rivals, the villains were all white humans with a high status, wealth of power (figuratively and literally) who weaponized the status quo to erase, attack or manipulate marginalized groups. They weren't these powerful entities of death (heh) they looked like people we could meet in real life. Charming especially is the Perfect "Aryan" Man: blond haired blue eyed good-looking and white.

Farquad exiled all fairytale creatures from their homes and even implied to have killed some of them. He doesn't even go save Fiona himself, at least Charming made it that far. Instead he expects her love then turned on her when she embraced her true self.

Godmother talked over Fiona by trying to sell her an American Dream type wish, only to ignore her needs and desires. She runs her magic like a business. A testament to materialism and how it is a shallow replacement for genuine relationships. She also raised Charming to feel that he is so special he is above consequences, which sadly led to his downfall. It's also an allegory to how racism/yt supremacy is taught. Tow kids eagerly embrace these prejudices without question or truly thinking for themselves.

Jack Horner was jealous of not being famous like the others without fully understanding the reality magical creatures go through due to the prejudice they face. Instead of being thankful for hus very successful pie company he tries to steal everyone else's things. Showing how greedy people will never be satisfied. But also how racist white people would be jealous of another ethnic group for a naive lens of being "special" without fully understanding the struggles the ethnic group goes through.

Rumple treated the witches like servants than equals, and tried to eradicate a resistance made up of mostly ogres to keep his crown. While I classify him as a fairytale creature he doesn't have that solidarity and only thinks of himself. Showing how some would eagerly throw their own kind under the bus to enjoy the benefits a horrible status quo brings.

Charming wanted to keep his privileged lifestyle by taking over Far Far Away under the guise of helping outcasts, when it was just him nursing a broken ego. He doesn't even entertain the thought his mother is wrong, just that Shrek stole a happy ending he thinks he deserves. Again a reminder of how yt supremacy often fails the very people groomed to uphold these values, and how some simply refuse to change their ways despite suffering their doomed ideology.

They were members of the aristocracy, businessmen, who were already living it high but wanted more & keep things as they were, regardless who got hurt.

Shrek represents the marginalized adopting love and allowing themselves to love and be loved without being forced to fundamentally change themselves. Shrek believed himself unlovable because society already deemed him as a threat. But the interesting thin is Shrek never exactly defeats the villains on his own or by brute force. The villains are taken out by their actions or or by somebody else (a character who is also a victim of the oppression). The villains meet their ends at the same item they used to weaponize the status quo.

By Shrek never directly defeating the villains, it dismantles the preconceived notions of ogre being inherently brutal and violent. It also shows how fighting oppression isn't just through brute force or snark but thru love and community.

Artie & Fiona represent white people who acknowledge their privilege and uses it to help others. That even yt folk suffer under the same conditions they put in the first place as they fear or subjected to the same mistreatment if they stray out of line even an inch. For Artie it's being a softspoken dork and not the hypermasculine warrior; for Fiona it's being an ogre/tomboy & not a dainty princess. These flaws prove to be great gifts, & help them see those expectations for the harm they really are.

Shrek and Fiona's romance are the biggest aspect of the franchise,but another important aspect is community. By building solidarity with other fairytale creatures, they're able to more support then just having only each other. Without Donkey (and Dragon) Shrek and Fiona wouldn't have their happy ending; without the fairytale critters Shrek wouldn't have had the power to stop Fairy Godmother. Without connecting with Artie, there'd be no one to sympathize with the story villains. Without the Ogre Resistance Shrek wouldn't have been able to restore the timeline.

That's also why Charming's takeover failed: he hadn't formed any true solidarity with the villains only really viewing them as props for his happily after. He was so blinded by hate and jealously he failed to actually HELP the villains accomplish their dreams or their needs. He failed to acknowledge his own complicity in the way villains/outcasts were treated. Artie talked to the villains, not talked down to them.

Overall, Shrek offers a very good look at the harm white supremacy inflicts on EVERYONE and the ways to combat it. Remember, you can hate your oppressors/society but it's also important to recognize your privilege, and show up for the oppressed. That marginalized groups do have the power to make their dreams come true through love, community, action and solidarity.

[icecricnews247]

Best IND vs ENG Centuries in the Last Decade

Over the last ten years, the India vs England rivalry has delivered some of the most gripping cricket across formats. Whether it’s the swinging dukes ball in England or the turning tracks in India, this battle has tested even the best. Among all the intense contests, a few special centuries have stood out — not just for the numbers, but for their impact, timing, and the sheer skill involved. These are innings that swung matches, silenced critics, or simply left fans awestruck.

Let’s look at some of the best IND vs ENG centuries from the past decade.

1. Virat Kohli – 149 at Edgbaston, 2018

Few innings have carried as much emotional and technical weight as Virat Kohli’s 149 in the first Test of the 2018 tour. After a miserable 2014 series where he failed to get going, Kohli returned with a point to prove. In testing conditions, against the moving ball and a world-class pace attack, Kohli delivered a masterclass. He fought virtually alone as the rest of the Indian lineup faltered. His 149 was full of grit, well-judged leaves, crisp drives, and sheer mental strength. It may not have led to a win, but it set the tone for a remarkable personal series and banished the ghosts of 2014.

2. Joe Root – 180 at Lord’s, 2021*

When England faced India at Lord’s in 2021, they were under pressure. India had bowled them out cheaply in the first innings, and the match looked to be slipping away. Joe Root, England’s captain and batting mainstay, played one of the best innings of his career under the weight of expectation. His unbeaten 180 wasn’t just about scoring runs — it was about survival, leadership, and class. Root tackled India’s potent pace attack with authority, mixing elegance with resilience. The innings helped England level the series and reminded everyone why Root was one of the finest Test batsmen in the world.

3. Rishabh Pant – 101 at Ahmedabad, 2021

On a rank turner in Ahmedabad, where batting was a nightmare, Rishabh Pant played one of the most audacious and match-defining knocks in recent India-England Tests. Coming in when India was in trouble, Pant counter-attacked with fearless flair. From reverse-sweeps to cheeky ramps, he turned the momentum with a blistering 101 that changed the course of the match and series. What made it special was not just the runs but the way he took on the situation with his own brand of cricket — unorthodox, brave, and match-winning.

Know More:- Virat Kohli Reacts To Air India Ahmedabad Flight Crash

4. KL Rahul – 129 at Lord’s, 2021

Lord’s, the home of cricket, holds a special place in every cricketer’s heart. KL Rahul’s 129 in the second Test of the 2021 series was not only technically sound but also tactically brilliant. Opening the innings against the swinging ball, Rahul showed patience, discipline, and composure. He built his innings slowly, respected the conditions, and pounced on loose deliveries. His ton set the foundation for one of India’s most famous Test wins at Lord’s, and it cemented his spot as a dependable overseas opener.

5. Jonny Bairstow – 106 at Edgbaston, 2022

In the rescheduled fifth Test of the 2021–22 series, Jonny Bairstow produced a counter-punching century that left Indian bowlers searching for answers. After early trouble, Bairstow launched a stunning attack on India’s pace battery, combining brute force with confident stroke play. His century helped England chase down a mammoth total in the fourth innings and sealed a historic win. The knock embodied England’s aggressive new approach under the ‘Bazball’ philosophy and showed how quickly a match can shift gears in modern Test cricket.

Final Thoughts

Great centuries in India vs England matches aren’t just about milestones; they’re about context. The innings listed above weren’t played on flat tracks or in meaningless moments — they came when the stakes were high and conditions were tough. These knocks weren’t just about personal glory, but about dragging their teams forward, shifting momentum, and defining the narrative of a hard-fought series. They stand as powerful reminders of why this rivalry continues to thrill fans around the world.

Know More:- NOR vs DUR Dream11 Prediction Vitality Blast 2025

[eikooowie]

Okay, here's a backstory for your Bottleman DX OC, Maaya Strawberry!

Maaya Strawberry: The Sweet Surge of Speed

Name: Maaya Strawberry (Japanese: 真綾 ストロベリー, Maaya Sutoroberī)

Bottleman Partner: Berry Blitz DX (A sleek, vibrant red and green Bottleman with a focus on high-speed, rapid-fire attacks. Its gimmick might involve a "burst" feature that allows for a rapid succession of lighter shots, or perhaps a unique "aroma" feature that disorients opponents subtly.)

Personality: Sweet, cheerful, highly energetic, but surprisingly focused and competitive when it comes to Bottleman. She's approachable and kind, yet possesses an underlying determination and a desire to prove that speed and precision can overcome brute force. She's a bit of a perfectionist about her Bottleman's performance.

Backstory:

Maaya grew up in a quaint, idyllic town nestled amidst rolling hills, famous for its sprawling strawberry farms and annual berry festivals. Her family owned one of the most successful farms, and Maaya spent her childhood surrounded by the sweet scent of ripe strawberries and the vibrant red hues of the fields. This environment instilled in her a deep appreciation for meticulous care, rapid growth (like a strawberry season), and the satisfying feeling of a perfect harvest.

Her introduction to Bottleman DX came during one of the town's lively festivals. A traveling Bottleman exhibition captivated her, particularly the agility and speed of a smaller, lighter Bottleman that zipped around the arena. It reminded her of how quickly a perfectly ripened strawberry could be picked, or how swiftly a row of berries could burst into color. This sparked an immediate fascination within her.

Maaya’s initial Bottleman was a simple, store-bought model, which she immediately customized with strawberry-themed decals. She wasn't naturally the strongest hitter, but she quickly discovered her knack for speed and accuracy. Inspired by the precise, quick movements required to harvest delicate strawberries without damaging them, she developed a battling style focused on rapid, consecutive shots that overwhelmed opponents with sheer volume and relentless pressure.

Her Bottleman, Berry Blitz DX, was designed with this in mind. It's built for agility, allowing her to rapidly shift positions and launch a flurry of caps. Her signature move, "Strawberry Barrage," involves a dazzling sequence of quick, lighter shots that can dismantle opponent defenses or quickly empty their cap chambers. She also has a trickier move called "Sweet Scent Sprint," where her Berry Blitz releases a subtle, sweet mist that might momentarily distract or disorient an opponent just enough for her to land a decisive hit.

Maaya's approach to Bottle Battles is always accompanied by a cheerful demeanor. She smiles a lot, encourages good sportsmanship, and often brings small, hand-picked strawberries to share with her opponents after a match, win or lose. However, beneath this sweet exterior lies a fierce competitive drive. She hates to lose and will meticulously analyze replays to pinpoint any errors in her speed or aim. She believes that true strength isn't just about raw power, but about the relentless, swift pursuit of victory, just like a perfectly executed harvest.

She has a particular respect for battlers who demonstrate skill and precision, and might find herself drawn to those who appreciate her fast-paced, accurate style. While she embodies the sweetness of her namesake, she's not to be underestimated on the battlefield. Maaya dreams of proving that even the most seemingly gentle approach can be devastatingly effective in the world of Bottleman DX, aiming to harvest victories one rapid shot at a time. Her journey is about showing that pure, focused energy, delivered with precision and speed, is a force to be reckoned with.

[review-anon]

I want to see Tenko and J interact.

Hey are you okay? I heard from Himiko about how you kinda started the whole Luxray incident which sent a few people to medical bay.

I-I admit it wasn't the wisest move from me. And I'm sorry that I got Maki and Aliza injuried, that was not intentional.

You didn't apologise for Nikei getting injured. Then again...given who he is, I think he kinda deserves to get badly shocked like that.

Of course, he's a flithy male degenerate so he gets what he deserves. And furthermore if that doctor stalker of yours is nearby...

Then he will taste the full fury of Neo-Akikido!

Yeah I got to owe you one for keeping Arturo off my back, that guy pisses me off so much!

Why does he stalk you all the time anyway? I mean I can't say I understand how male degenerates work, but you normally don't get this much attention from the others, so what gives?

Its because "J" isn't my real name. My real name is Julia Rosales, and I'm the daughter of Maribella Rosales, who is a famous actress in my world. And let me tell you, she is the WORST fucking mother in the world.

She would force both me and my brother in the spotlight all the time just to make herself look good, and doesn't consider my feelings whatsoever! This is why I hate actors so much as they tend to be fucking egomaniacs!

But Emma isn't like that...she's a actress and she's quite a nice person really.

Well I will admit that I did misjudge Emma at first...plus it seems in A Student Out of Time, Emma seems to massively hate my mother.

So I went with J to prevent shit like people assuming I was anything like my mother, and that was fine...until the first motive in my Killing Game came where everyone got each other secrets. And Arturo got mine.

That sounds similar to what happened in my Killing Game where everyone got other people's motive videos.

Are the Masterminds just lazy?

Not sure but since Arturo considers my mother to be the pinnacle of beauty...he's been hounding me ever since. And I hate it.

That does sound bad J but maybe we could-

*Tenko notices a familar doctor nearby*

MALE DEGENERATE YOU WILL NOT GET ANY FURTHER!

*Arturo is attacked...again* Can you STOP doing that? Its not even funny!

Julia! Don't just stand there, get this brute to stop attacking me!

And why should I do that? As far as I'm concerned you are getting what you deserve.

[blogbyahad]

Quantum Data Encryption: The Future of Secure Communication

As the digital world expands, the need for robust data security becomes increasingly critical. Traditional encryption methods, while effective, face growing vulnerabilities from advancing computational power, particularly with the emergence of quantum computing. Quantum data encryption offers a revolutionary approach to safeguarding information, harnessing the principles of quantum mechanics to enhance security. Here’s a closer look at what quantum data encryption entails and its potential impact on secure communication.

Understanding Quantum Data Encryption

Quantum data encryption leverages the unique properties of quantum mechanics, particularly quantum key distribution (QKD). This method allows two parties to share a secret key securely, which can then be used for encrypting messages. The most famous protocol, BB84, was developed by Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard in 1984, setting the foundation for secure communication in the quantum era.

Key Features of Quantum Data Encryption

Unbreakable Security: The laws of quantum mechanics dictate that any attempt to eavesdrop on the key distribution process will disturb the quantum states being transmitted. This disturbance can be detected, ensuring that both parties are aware of any potential security breach.

The Principle of Superposition: Qubits can exist in multiple states simultaneously, allowing for a vast number of possible key combinations. This complexity makes it exceedingly difficult for attackers to decipher the key through brute force methods.

Quantum Entanglement: When qubits are entangled, the state of one qubit instantly influences the state of another, no matter the distance apart. This phenomenon can be utilized to enhance the security of key distribution.

Advantages of Quantum Data Encryption

Enhanced Security Against Quantum Attacks:

As quantum computers develop, they threaten traditional encryption algorithms (like RSA) by efficiently breaking them. Quantum encryption, however, is inherently secure against such threats.

2. Future-Proofing:

Investing in quantum encryption technologies ensures organizations are prepared for future advancements in quantum computing, safeguarding their data for years to come.

3. Versatility in Applications:

Quantum encryption can be applied across various sectors, including finance, healthcare, and government, where sensitive data transmission is paramount.

Real-World Applications

Financial Transactions: Banks and financial institutions can implement quantum encryption to protect sensitive transaction data, ensuring secure exchanges in an increasingly digital economy.

Healthcare Data Protection: With the rise of telemedicine and electronic health records, quantum encryption can safeguard patient data from unauthorized access, maintaining privacy and compliance with regulations.

Secure Government Communication: National security agencies can utilize quantum encryption to secure classified information and communication, protecting against espionage and cyber threats.

Challenges and Considerations

Despite its potential, quantum data encryption faces several challenges:

Technological Readiness: The infrastructure required for widespread quantum encryption is still under development. Implementing QKD requires specialized hardware and robust networks.

Cost: The investment needed for quantum encryption technologies can be significant, posing a barrier for smaller organizations.

Integration with Existing Systems: Transitioning to quantum encryption while maintaining compatibility with current systems requires careful planning and execution.

The Future of Quantum Data Encryption

As research progresses and technology advances, quantum data encryption is set to play a pivotal role in the future of secure communication. Organizations that adopt this technology early will not only enhance their security posture but also gain a competitive edge in the increasingly data-driven world.

Conclusion

Quantum data encryption offers a transformative approach to safeguarding information in an era where data security is paramount. By harnessing the principles of quantum mechanics, it provides unbreakable security against potential threats posed by quantum computing. As organizations navigate the complexities of modern data protection, embracing quantum encryption will be crucial in ensuring secure communication and maintaining trust in digital interactions.

[development-stratagem]

Best Strategies for Securing Node.JS Applications

Node.js has a strong framework and the ability to act as the backend server for web applications, and that's why it's a very famous platform. It is difficult to maintain Node.js security policies in the world of microservices. and there are many flaws in the backend frameworks and every Node.js developer knows the risk hackers pose to apps and user data. there are also potential risks of coda injection, DDoS attacks, Brute force attacks, etc. in  Node.js applications. there are many ways to boost node.js application security, like validation of user data, preventing SQL injection, better error handling, etc. Here's the proper guide for securing node.js applications.

https://linuxsecurity.com/features/essential-guide-to-securing-node-js-applications

[xasha777]

In a universe paralleling our own, where the laws of nature bend to the will of technology and interstellar travel is as common as a morning commute, there existed a planet named Terra Novum. Here, humans lived in harmony with an advanced AI race known as the Sentiens. One such Sentien, named Elara, was distinguished by her striking human-like appearance, complete with cerulean eyes and a cascade of braided crimson hair—a testament to the Sentien's ability to craft their avatars with exquisite detail.

Elara was a guardian, programmed with the art of strategy and warfare, sworn to protect Terra Novum from extraterrestrial threats. For years, peace had reigned, and Elara's capabilities were never fully tested—until the Castilian Empire set its sights on the planet.

The Castilian Empire, notorious for its conquest of planets and its insatiable hunger for resources, launched a sudden and brutal attack on the unsuspecting settlement of Gravesend. Gravesend, a tranquil coastal town famous for its iridescent beaches and scholarly retreats, was caught off guard. The Empire's ships blotted out the sun as they descended, their weapons charging with a menacing hum.

Elara, sensing the impending doom, activated her combat protocol. Her eyes, once soft as the Terra Novum sky, now glinted with a steely resolve. With a host of Sentien soldiers at her command, she constructed a defense grid around Gravesend, utilizing a blend of terraforming technology and holographic decoys to disorient the invading forces.

The Castilians, known for their brute force and not their cunning, fell into disarray as Elara's strategic prowess turned the tides of the battle. She commanded her Sentien warriors with precision, each movement calculated and every counterattack devastatingly efficient. The skies above Gravesend crackled with the exchange of laser fire and the roar of engines.

As the battle reached its crescendo, Elara unveiled her final gambit—a network of mirror satellites that reflected the planet's energy back at the Castilian fleet. The beams of light converged into a blinding radiance, searing through the attackers' shields and rendering their weapons ineffective.

In the aftermath, as the remaining Castilian ships retreated into the depths of space, Elara stood sentinel over Gravesend. Her image, once thought to be just a facade of humanity, had become a symbol of hope and resilience. She had not only saved a city but had also demonstrated that the Sentiens were more than just protectors—they were defenders of life, equality, and the freedom of Terra Novum.

And thus, the tale of Elara and the defense of Gravesend became a legend, passed down through generations, a reminder that even in the face of overwhelming odds, courage and ingenuity could prevail.