[geeks] Interesting: hardware security token for PayPal

[Lionel Peterson]

>From: Charles Shannon Hendrix <shannon at widomaker.com>
>Date: 2007/04/04 Wed AM 10:08:45 CDT
>To: The Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
>Subject: Re: [geeks] Interesting: hardware security token for PayPal

>Tue, 03 Apr 2007 @ 22:28 -0500, Lionel Peterson said:

<snip>

>> I've got one from an old job, going on three years ago, and it still works 
>> fine, but since I'm not there anymore, I can't test it ;^)
>
>I was mainly interested in how long they last before they stop
>repeating.
>
>Geoffrey mentioned (I think, I'm lost in the thread now) having a card
>which never repeated.
>
>So, I was wondering how long the sequence of numbers lasted, not how
>long before the card died.

Well, if there are 1 Million unique numbers (6 digits, 000000 -> 999999), and 
each lasts one minute, the math indicates there are enough *possible* unique 
numbers to last just over 2 years (nearly 700 days), but I honestly don't 
*think* (I'm guessing) that the card is not designed to exhaust all possible 
numbers before repeating...

Lionel