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Another point to add to yours is that there are so few people capable of understanding these convoluted protocols and cryptosystems. How many people are activel

Another point to add to yours is that there are so few people capable of understanding these convoluted protocols and cryptosystems. How many people are actively attempting to find weaknesses in AES, Elliptic Curves, SHA1, DLP, IFP? Also, often times those people currently examining these systems are the same exact people that were performing the state of the art cryptanalysis in the 90's

tptacek 10y ago
Like, the whole academic field of cryptography?
- schoen 10y ago
  It's impressive how much progress that field has made since the 1990s. I know there are other criticisms of Applied Cryptography, but we understand so much now that we didn't at the time it appeared. Something I find a bit disturbing is how much of our understanding of particular issues seems to depend on brilliant individuals. This is a bit like the Bernstein monoculture article that was discussed here recently but I'm also thinking of several of the items from Boneh's RSA attack overview paper, or maybe Xiaoyun Wang's hash function stuff. Clearly all discoveries are going to be made and published by someone, but something about the academic field of cryptography keeps striking me as "wow, we're really lucky to have that person in this field". And that's a bit concerning because this phenomenon seems to suggest either that the field is still pretty small or still pretty immature, and in that sense may still be missing several important discoveries, for all the progress that it's made since the early nineties.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    That's kind of a strange takeaway from Boneh's RSA attack paper, which is a survey of other researchers; IIRC, no two of the attacks in that paper came from the same researcher. Bernstein is a bit of an odd duck in this regard, but if you look at some of the other "great personages of cryptography", you'll see that they're minting PhDs who are themselves going on to do important work, so the capacity of the field is expanding, not contracting to a single Bernstein monoculture point. Bernstein's position in the field of practical cryptography is a product of an almost monomaniacal focus on commodity hardware performance and ease of use. The Bernstein monoculture will pass --- probably soon, after CAESAR finishes, or if people start taking pq crypto more seriously.
    - schoen 10y ago
      > That's kind of a strange takeaway from Boneh's RSA attack paper, which is a survey of other researchers; IIRC, no two of the attacks in that paper came from the same researcher. I think I had that sense about individual items there, like Coppersmith's attack. > if you look at some of the other "great personages of cryptography", you'll see that they're minting PhDs who are themselves going on to do important work, so the capacity of the field is expanding, not contracting to a single Bernstein monoculture point. That's great news.
    - nickpsecurity 10y ago
      "Bernstein's position in the field of practical cryptography is a product of an almost monomaniacal focus on commodity hardware performance and ease of use. " It's like a marketing issue to me. He focused on what type of crypto there was a large demand for. His solutions now have the First Mover advantage. Others can still compete although his will stay widely deployed or long-lasting in legacy systems.
  - Ar-Curunir 10y ago
    It's easy to get this view from outside, but there's lots and lots of people working on this stuff within the field of cryptography that people in software engineering don't hear about because their work doesn't quite have that focus on implementation, that, for instance, DJB's work has.
api 10y ago
The ciphers aren't the problem. The protocols are. IPSEC is insanely over engineered, as are most protocols these days. It's not just in crypto. I was looking at the guts of web sockets the other day and was like WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY. I usually find myself asking "what problem does this solve?" over and over when I look at modern systems. Of course even with my strong bias against it I am still occasionally guilty of over engineering. I just rewrote a major system to de-engineer it. I just keep thinking I will need it even when I have YAGNI tattooed on the inside of my eyelids.
Ar-Curunir 10y ago
There's actually lots and lots of people attempting to break these primitives; just take a look at the proceedings of CRYPTO, EUROCRYPT, FSE, CHES, etc.

tptacek 10y ago

Like, the whole academic field of cryptography?

schoen 10y ago
It's impressive how much progress that field has made since the 1990s. I know there are other criticisms of Applied Cryptography, but we understand so much now that we didn't at the time it appeared. Something I find a bit disturbing is how much of our understanding of particular issues seems to depend on brilliant individuals. This is a bit like the Bernstein monoculture article that was discussed here recently but I'm also thinking of several of the items from Boneh's RSA attack overview paper, or maybe Xiaoyun Wang's hash function stuff. Clearly all discoveries are going to be made and published by someone, but something about the academic field of cryptography keeps striking me as "wow, we're really lucky to have that person in this field". And that's a bit concerning because this phenomenon seems to suggest either that the field is still pretty small or still pretty immature, and in that sense may still be missing several important discoveries, for all the progress that it's made since the early nineties.
- tptacek 10y ago
  That's kind of a strange takeaway from Boneh's RSA attack paper, which is a survey of other researchers; IIRC, no two of the attacks in that paper came from the same researcher. Bernstein is a bit of an odd duck in this regard, but if you look at some of the other "great personages of cryptography", you'll see that they're minting PhDs who are themselves going on to do important work, so the capacity of the field is expanding, not contracting to a single Bernstein monoculture point. Bernstein's position in the field of practical cryptography is a product of an almost monomaniacal focus on commodity hardware performance and ease of use. The Bernstein monoculture will pass --- probably soon, after CAESAR finishes, or if people start taking pq crypto more seriously.
  - schoen 10y ago
    > That's kind of a strange takeaway from Boneh's RSA attack paper, which is a survey of other researchers; IIRC, no two of the attacks in that paper came from the same researcher. I think I had that sense about individual items there, like Coppersmith's attack. > if you look at some of the other "great personages of cryptography", you'll see that they're minting PhDs who are themselves going on to do important work, so the capacity of the field is expanding, not contracting to a single Bernstein monoculture point. That's great news.
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    "Bernstein's position in the field of practical cryptography is a product of an almost monomaniacal focus on commodity hardware performance and ease of use. " It's like a marketing issue to me. He focused on what type of crypto there was a large demand for. His solutions now have the First Mover advantage. Others can still compete although his will stay widely deployed or long-lasting in legacy systems.
- Ar-Curunir 10y ago
  It's easy to get this view from outside, but there's lots and lots of people working on this stuff within the field of cryptography that people in software engineering don't hear about because their work doesn't quite have that focus on implementation, that, for instance, DJB's work has.

api 10y ago

The ciphers aren't the problem. The protocols are. IPSEC is insanely over engineered, as are most protocols these days. It's not just in crypto. I was looking at the guts of web sockets the other day and was like WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY. I usually find myself asking "what problem does this solve?" over and over when I look at modern systems. Of course even with my strong bias against it I am still occasionally guilty of over engineering. I just rewrote a major system to de-engineer it. I just keep thinking I will need it even when I have YAGNI tattooed on the inside of my eyelids.

Ar-Curunir 10y ago

There's actually lots and lots of people attempting to break these primitives; just take a look at the proceedings of CRYPTO, EUROCRYPT, FSE, CHES, etc.