Ask HN: What data format does this look like?

2 pointsby ciderpunxabout 8 years ago

Trying to figure out my local bus company's ticketing system.Here's one of the fields on it, anyone know what it might be?P08pxI+q7abfvq3LIwspLRy/EWQ=

3 comments

niftichabout 8 years ago

It looks like a base64-encoded 20-byte value, which decodes to:3f 4f 29 c4 8f aa ed a6 df be ad cb 23 0b 29 2d 1c bf 11 64The length of a SHA-1 digest is 160 bits = 20 bytes. This does not at all conclusively mean this value may be a SHA-1 digest, but 160 bits is not a length of value that's customarily used for random nonces, random identifiers, and the like. I recommend you suppose it's a SHA-1 digest and work from there.

Communitivityabout 8 years ago

This is some binary Base64 encoded, would be my guess. This is because of the combination of characters and the = at the end.

smottsabout 8 years ago

That looks like the text left behind when I got hacked.