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Perhaps you refer to a specific part of applied crypto; most crypto, from what I've seen, is not focused on breaks of the cryptanalytic kind (as in "oh, let's t

Perhaps you refer to a specific part of applied crypto; most crypto, from what I've seen, is not focused on breaks of the cryptanalytic kind (as in "oh, let's try to break SHA256!"). Note that I'm speaking from an academic perspective.

tptacek 10y ago
No, I'm referring to theoretical cryptography as well. One example: the CAESAR competition that is trying to select a portfolio of next-generation AEADs. Ciphers and constructions are entered, and submissions are sorted by the success of attacks. Another example: databases and format-preserving encryption. It might look like Order Revealing Encryption is an exercise in building things, but it's also a response to vulnerabilities in Order Preserving Encryption. One team develops something like cryptdb; another tears up cryptdb and uses its findings to design Cipherbase (or whatever). Unlike in generalist software development, most new things in crypto are responses to breaks, often by the authors of the breaks.
- Ar-Curunir 10y ago
  I can agree with the assessment of encrypted DBs and SSE schemes, but I don't feel like that's the case for a huge portion of theoretical-ish crypto. Sure, I'm not disagreeing that people don't break things; I'm just feel like that's not a primary focus of most academic cryptographers; taking a look at the papers in the last few CRYPTOs and EUROCRYPTs only consolidates this feeling. One exception to that is perhaps multilinear maps, for which candidates are proposed and broken all the time, but once a assumption becomes battle-tested then I feel the focus shifts to building things out of these assumption
  - CiPHPerCoder 10y ago
    > I don't feel like that's the case for a huge portion of theoretical-ish crypto. You could always verify this feeling: https://eprint.iacr.org/eprint-bin/search.pl?last=365&title=1 https://eprint.iacr.org/eprint-bin/search.pl?last=365&title=...
    - Ar-Curunir 10y ago
      ePrint is not necessarily the best indicator for such things, since essentially anybody can post there, but even so, from some random sampling it seems like more than a majority of papers are constructive and not about attacks.
      - tptacek 10y ago
        Let's try this, instead: can you name some important fundamental theoretical work in cryptography that isn't defined by attacks? Obviously, that's a subjective judgement. Whatever you name though, we can just look and see how much of it is defined by attacker capabilities.
        Ar-Curunir 10y ago
        Zero knowledge proofs? Multiparty computation? These are the staples of theoretical crypto.
        tptacek 10y ago
        Ok, let's say that those are. What's an important paper in either, so we can look at it more closely?
        Ar-Curunir 10y ago
        The very foundational paper for zero knowledge did not have much to do with attacks. Similarly for many many subsequent works. Similarly for MPC. Most work in MPC is about improving efficiency or proving security against stronger classes of adversaries; it is not in finding breaks of these protocols. As I said earlier, tye majority of crypto research is in the following scenario: pinning down a battle-tested assumption, using that assumption in a provably secure manner to construct new systems. zero knowledge, MPC, ORAM, etc. all fall within this paradigm. Constructing new assumptions is obviously a task where attacks are necessary, but new assumptions come along every 5-7 years; the intervening period is dominated by this black box use of assumptions. EDIT: see this[1] listof most cited security and crypto papers; very few attack papers. [1] http://saweis.net/posts/most-cited-security-papers-2013-2014.html http://saweis.net/posts/most-cited-security-papers-2013-2014...
  - baby 10y ago
    https://www.dropbox.com/s/8bays3lv9enk66b/2016-08-16%2019.36.27.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/8bays3lv9enk66b/2016-08-16%2019.36... The most trending kind of paper at last crypto was about cryptanalysis
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    Im mostly with tptacek and ciphercoder on this but they're not quite right. I go through tons of papers on INFOSEC research in a year. Many I see most points of the year are introducing crypto schemes or breaking them. I'll add there's a few other categories that require little breaker ability: 1. Verification of previously described properties of algorithms or protocols. This is basically math where key constraints could be done checklist style. 2. Building tools to support cryptography research or development. Cryptol is a great example of this. 3. Speed improvements on crypto algorithms that preserve mathematical properties. Analyzing against common flaws usually covers problems you could have here. 4. Usable crypto. There's some breaking that goes in this but it's mostly presentation stuff. Can often use battle-tested tools that come with tips for proper usage. These come to mind as not directly related to inventing or breaking new schemes far as crypto itself. I wouldn't need someone with the security mindset to do these things do much as give them some training on what to do and not to do. I think you were referring to No 1 on my list.

tptacek 10y ago

No, I'm referring to theoretical cryptography as well. One example: the CAESAR competition that is trying to select a portfolio of next-generation AEADs. Ciphers and constructions are entered, and submissions are sorted by the success of attacks. Another example: databases and format-preserving encryption. It might look like Order Revealing Encryption is an exercise in building things, but it's also a response to vulnerabilities in Order Preserving Encryption. One team develops something like cryptdb; another tears up cryptdb and uses its findings to design Cipherbase (or whatever). Unlike in generalist software development, most new things in crypto are responses to breaks, often by the authors of the breaks.

Ar-Curunir 10y ago
I can agree with the assessment of encrypted DBs and SSE schemes, but I don't feel like that's the case for a huge portion of theoretical-ish crypto. Sure, I'm not disagreeing that people don't break things; I'm just feel like that's not a primary focus of most academic cryptographers; taking a look at the papers in the last few CRYPTOs and EUROCRYPTs only consolidates this feeling. One exception to that is perhaps multilinear maps, for which candidates are proposed and broken all the time, but once a assumption becomes battle-tested then I feel the focus shifts to building things out of these assumption
- CiPHPerCoder 10y ago
  > I don't feel like that's the case for a huge portion of theoretical-ish crypto. You could always verify this feeling: https://eprint.iacr.org/eprint-bin/search.pl?last=365&title=1 https://eprint.iacr.org/eprint-bin/search.pl?last=365&title=...
  - Ar-Curunir 10y ago
    ePrint is not necessarily the best indicator for such things, since essentially anybody can post there, but even so, from some random sampling it seems like more than a majority of papers are constructive and not about attacks.
    - tptacek 10y ago
      Let's try this, instead: can you name some important fundamental theoretical work in cryptography that isn't defined by attacks? Obviously, that's a subjective judgement. Whatever you name though, we can just look and see how much of it is defined by attacker capabilities.
      - Ar-Curunir 10y ago
        Zero knowledge proofs? Multiparty computation? These are the staples of theoretical crypto.
        tptacek 10y ago
        Ok, let's say that those are. What's an important paper in either, so we can look at it more closely?
        Ar-Curunir 10y ago
        The very foundational paper for zero knowledge did not have much to do with attacks. Similarly for many many subsequent works. Similarly for MPC. Most work in MPC is about improving efficiency or proving security against stronger classes of adversaries; it is not in finding breaks of these protocols. As I said earlier, tye majority of crypto research is in the following scenario: pinning down a battle-tested assumption, using that assumption in a provably secure manner to construct new systems. zero knowledge, MPC, ORAM, etc. all fall within this paradigm. Constructing new assumptions is obviously a task where attacks are necessary, but new assumptions come along every 5-7 years; the intervening period is dominated by this black box use of assumptions. EDIT: see this[1] listof most cited security and crypto papers; very few attack papers. [1] http://saweis.net/posts/most-cited-security-papers-2013-2014.html http://saweis.net/posts/most-cited-security-papers-2013-2014...
- baby 10y ago
  https://www.dropbox.com/s/8bays3lv9enk66b/2016-08-16%2019.36.27.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/8bays3lv9enk66b/2016-08-16%2019.36... The most trending kind of paper at last crypto was about cryptanalysis
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  Im mostly with tptacek and ciphercoder on this but they're not quite right. I go through tons of papers on INFOSEC research in a year. Many I see most points of the year are introducing crypto schemes or breaking them. I'll add there's a few other categories that require little breaker ability: 1. Verification of previously described properties of algorithms or protocols. This is basically math where key constraints could be done checklist style. 2. Building tools to support cryptography research or development. Cryptol is a great example of this. 3. Speed improvements on crypto algorithms that preserve mathematical properties. Analyzing against common flaws usually covers problems you could have here. 4. Usable crypto. There's some breaking that goes in this but it's mostly presentation stuff. Can often use battle-tested tools that come with tips for proper usage. These come to mind as not directly related to inventing or breaking new schemes far as crypto itself. I wouldn't need someone with the security mindset to do these things do much as give them some training on what to do and not to do. I think you were referring to No 1 on my list.