Tarsnap technical details
Like any sophisticated system, a large number of technical decisions went into building Tarsnap; in Tarsnap's case, these ranged from the question of what currency unit to use to the problem of constructing a key derivation function resistant to brute force attacks using custom hardware.
While none of these details are likely to be vitally important for Tarsnap users, they are nonetheless interesting, and potentially useful to Tarsnap users and non-users alike; so this corner of the Tarsnap website is a dumping ground for assorted Tarsnap-related details:
- Why are Tarsnap prices defined in picodollars?
- Why is 1 GB equal to 10^9 bytes, not 2^30 bytes?
- How does Tarsnap use all of its cryptographic keys to keep data safe?
- The scrypt key derivation function.
- The kivaloo data store.
- The spiped secure pipe daemon.
Think something about Tarsnap is interesting enough that it should be explained here? Contact the author and let him know.