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I figured someone who knows more about this (than me) would write a good reply to this, and they did: Ron Garret replies: Saying "How on earth did it come

I figured someone who knows more about this (than me) would write a good reply to this, and they did: Ron Garret replies: Saying "How on earth did it come to this?” strongly implies that you think that the trend towards DJB’s crypto suite a problem, but you don’t offer much in terms of proposals for how to solve it, or even what a solution would look like. You seem to agree that a solution would *not* look like the status quo. So what exactly are you advocating here? I submit that the impending monoculture in crypto is not necessarily a problem, any more than the monoculture in physics (what? No alternatives to GR and QM?) or climate science is necessarily a problem. It’s possible that crypto has a Right Answer, and that Dan Bernstein has discovered/ invented it. If you believe that simplicity and minimalism ought to be part of the quality metric then there may be very few local maxima in the design space, and DJB may simply have found one of them. rg

skywhopper 11y ago
Unfortunately, this argument doesn't really make sense. Just like decades of software development (should) have taught us, and just like fighting climate change, doing physics research, giving antibiotics, fighting terrorists, criminals, spammers, enemy armies, eating healthy, raising kids, whatever--multiple approaches and techniques and tools are always a good thing. Why would crypto be the one single area of life where there was a Right Answer? The fact that crypto is part of an arms race with criminals and authoritarian governments is strong evidence that a monoculture is not the right approach.
- tptacek 11y ago
  It is demonstrably not the case that diversity in cryptographic constructions is always a good thing. What it usually results in is a diversity of single points of failure.
  - adt2bt 11y ago
    Great point. When selecting a crypto approach, it makes no sense to not choose what is apparently "the best" at this time. However, is there a legitimate concern that we're collectively hoping DJB hasn't messed anything up? I'm no expert in the area, but are there ways to prove that his work is correct?
    - wolf550e 11y ago
      Many people have tried to find flaws in his math. DJB and friends now work on formal verification of implementations.
- woodman 11y ago
  All those examples are extremely high level abstractions, but cryptography is not - it is a direct application of math to a single purpose. > ...multiple approaches and techniques and tools are always a good thing. Only at a very high level. If you switched out "cryptography" with "privacy protection" then you'd be right.
- bascule 11y ago
  Cryptographers are mathematicians working in a limited problem space. It should therefore be no surprise that they converge on similar solutions (e.g. both RSA and D-H were discovered at GCHQ years before they were independently rediscovered by the people in the initialisms)
habitue 11y ago
To expand on this, part of what makes DJB's algorithms more likely to be the Right Answer in the way being discussed is that he chose curves for them that satisfy a number of security constraints, but that are also the simplest possible that satisfy those properties. In other words, if you accept the constraints put on the algorithms[1], and were to go on to determine your own implementation based on them, it's very likely you would come up with something like the DJB curves. (This is assuming you are up on the latest crypto techniques etc). [1]SafeCurves: https://safecurves.cr.yp.to/ https://safecurves.cr.yp.to/
_delirium 11y ago
I read the "how on earth did it come to this?" question differently than Garret did, more about the rest of the field than about DJB. How did it come to a point where it seems literally only DJB is producing high-quality crypto systems that people want to move to, and nobody else is? tptacek's answer to that question is pretty reasonable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11357587 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11357587
dave2000 11y ago
I'm reading this on an android phone; is there a way of forcing that text to not require me to scroll back and forth on every single line?
- mintplant 11y ago
  On Firefox for Android you can activate Reader View by tapping the book icon in the address bar.

skywhopper 11y ago

Unfortunately, this argument doesn't really make sense. Just like decades of software development (should) have taught us, and just like fighting climate change, doing physics research, giving antibiotics, fighting terrorists, criminals, spammers, enemy armies, eating healthy, raising kids, whatever--multiple approaches and techniques and tools are always a good thing. Why would crypto be the one single area of life where there was a Right Answer? The fact that crypto is part of an arms race with criminals and authoritarian governments is strong evidence that a monoculture is not the right approach.

tptacek 11y ago
It is demonstrably not the case that diversity in cryptographic constructions is always a good thing. What it usually results in is a diversity of single points of failure.
- adt2bt 11y ago
  Great point. When selecting a crypto approach, it makes no sense to not choose what is apparently "the best" at this time. However, is there a legitimate concern that we're collectively hoping DJB hasn't messed anything up? I'm no expert in the area, but are there ways to prove that his work is correct?
  - wolf550e 11y ago
    Many people have tried to find flaws in his math. DJB and friends now work on formal verification of implementations.
woodman 11y ago
All those examples are extremely high level abstractions, but cryptography is not - it is a direct application of math to a single purpose. > ...multiple approaches and techniques and tools are always a good thing. Only at a very high level. If you switched out "cryptography" with "privacy protection" then you'd be right.
bascule 11y ago
Cryptographers are mathematicians working in a limited problem space. It should therefore be no surprise that they converge on similar solutions (e.g. both RSA and D-H were discovered at GCHQ years before they were independently rediscovered by the people in the initialisms)

habitue 11y ago

To expand on this, part of what makes DJB's algorithms more likely to be the Right Answer in the way being discussed is that he chose curves for them that satisfy a number of security constraints, but that are also the simplest possible that satisfy those properties. In other words, if you accept the constraints put on the algorithms[1], and were to go on to determine your own implementation based on them, it's very likely you would come up with something like the DJB curves. (This is assuming you are up on the latest crypto techniques etc). [1]SafeCurves: https://safecurves.cr.yp.to/ https://safecurves.cr.yp.to/

_delirium 11y ago

I read the "how on earth did it come to this?" question differently than Garret did, more about the rest of the field than about DJB. How did it come to a point where it seems literally only DJB is producing high-quality crypto systems that people want to move to, and nobody else is? tptacek's answer to that question is pretty reasonable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11357587 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11357587

dave2000 11y ago

I'm reading this on an android phone; is there a way of forcing that text to not require me to scroll back and forth on every single line?

mintplant 11y ago
On Firefox for Android you can activate Reader View by tapping the book icon in the address bar.