On this #WayBackWednesday, our 8-bit history lesson zooms in on bytes. The term was introduced (arguably) in 1956. Historically, “byte” has been use to describe the number of bits needed to encode a single character of text. We commonly think of this as 8 bits, but depending on encoding and computer architecture, bytes have been implemented with anywhere from 1 to 48 bits. With that, something we thought was simple becomes a lot more complex…
Encoding has long been a challenge for communication between systems. Systems, with possibly different architectures, need to be able to present information to users at the application layer in consistent ways. For this, we have a variety of standard protocols that enable this communication.
An example of one of these protocols is MIME. It defines how email handles non-ASCII text and other non-text attachments. What could go wrong? Check out Steffen Ullrich’s BSides Munich presentation, “MIME is Broken” https://youtu.be/yhDPLZOTd2g?feature=shared to see how different interpretations of the MIME protocol can result in security weaknesses in systems.
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BSidesMunich 8-Bit :: Forged by HI