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Shufflix: Changes October 2017 |
A new version of Shufflix was released in October 2017. These are the major changes in the new version
The user can choose their own file name. If no file name is chosen, the system provides one with 8 random characters.
The user interface uses features that have become available since the last major update 15 years ago.
The HTML file is suitable for printing on A4 paper.
Shufflix provides secure, encrypted transmission of the entire transaction, including the deal generated. This is done by means of the HTTPS protocol – the same protocol that is used to protect credit card transactions on the internet.
The older version of Shufflix has also been updated to use HTTPS.
Every time Shufflix delivers a deal, it reports a checksum for the deal. The checksum is also listed in the printable HTML-version of the deal. When two or more files with the same name are available, the checksum can be used to distinguish between the files. The checksum can also be used in an audit to verify that a file with a deal has not been altered.
There is a companion web application to Shufflix that can be used to determine the checksum of a BRI file or a DUP file.
Technically, the checksum is the MD5 hash of the BRI file that describes the deals.
The random number generator has been updated to be based on the hash algorithm SHA-256. The earlier version of Shufflix uses MD5. The generator follows NIST's Recommendation for Random Number Generation Using Deterministic Random Bit Generators (NIST Special Publication 800-90A, Revision 1, June 2015). As recommended, it constructs a unique seed that consists of a personalization string, a nonce, and 128 bits of cryptographically secure entropy input. It generates random numbers by hashing the seed with a counter. If you don't know what all this means, don't worry about it. It has been verified separately that the new random number generator is statistically sound (as was the old).