Mass confusion as Google asks users to learn ‘what a nonce is’

As well as being a cryptographic term for a ‘number used once’, a ‘nonce’ is also British slang for paedophile

(Unsplash)

Google has issued a new security measure for its Android devices – although its name has caused controversy in the UK.

“Boost your app’s security with the nonce field of the Play Integrity API”, a tweet sent yesterday by the Android Developers account, run by the search giant, said.

It linked to a blog post where users could learn “what a nonce is” and “how to set” and “verify” the nonce.

(@AndroidDev)

A nonce is a cryptography and security engineering term, where a “number once” – shortened to nonce – is a number that is used only one time in a secure communication. Nonces are used in authentication, encryption, and hashing, Google explains in its blog.

It can be used to stop person-in-the-middle attacks, whereby a cybercriminal would secretly read and possibly alter communications between two parties who believe that they are directly communicating with each other.

Unfortunately for the search giant, a “nonce” is also British slang for “paedophile”.

Google has since deleted the post after being alerted to its meaning, which many users did with GIFs and tweets.

“While I understand that this is an industry term, could we not have done better with the naming?” Android developer Chris Banes tweeted. “Nonce has quite a different meaning in the UK”.

This is not the only time that companies have been caught out not knowing the word’s second meaning. In July last year, a US-based crypto startup called Nonce Finance had to rename itself to Nibbl after people pointed out the other definition of the word.

“Lesson learnt. Next time will look at British meaning of words too. Thanks for the memes”, the company tweeted.