3 ms·
> Why is it necessary to volunteer expert time every time someone publishes a new piece of code I would agree if the author presented a very clearly flawed and
by Cyph0n 10y ago
> Why is it necessary to volunteer expert time every time someone publishes a new piece of code
I would agree if the author presented a very clearly flawed and poorly thought out implementation, but this is clearly not the case here. There is a quality threshold after which spouting out "No, use NaCl!" becomes a waste of time.
> by their own admission is not a significant improvement over TweetNaCl?
Not everything in the real world has to be a significant improvement.
> [...] if something doesn't do a good job arguing why you need it
Not everyone is good at marketing his/her creations. It's pretty tough to do well in my opinion, and there's always "that guy" who's never satisfied by any explanation.
> [...] _solid engineering advice_
I would agree with you in most other scenarios, but the author of this library mentioned NaCl in the first paragraph. The author also took the time to list the motivation behind this work, as well as the reasons why this could provide potential improvements over prior work.
So I don't see how "NO, use NaCl!" is 'solid' advice in this case.
- lvh 10y agoBut we've engaged with those motivations, and found them lacking -- so libsodium is still what tqbf and I recommend. (Not NaCl! libsodium is sufficiently interestingly different that you should use it, not NaCl.) It is not true that any attempt at new crypto software will just be shut down; for example, I think Noise is awesome. I think STROBE is pretty cool too, but I'm not telling people to implement STROBE. I'm telling people to use libsodium. Telling people to use the probably-already-packaged, carefully reviewed, random-nonce supporting package they had available yesterday _is_ solid engineering advance, and I stand by that claim.
- Cyph0n 10y agoI definitely agree that going around adopting freshly written and poorly tested crypto libraries is A BAD IDEA EVERY TIME. Absolutely no argument there. I still got a very "stop what you're doing and move on" vibe from the parent comment as well as the response on the Reddit thread, and I feel that it wasn't fair in this case. I apologize if I misunderstood.
- lvh 10y agoTo go back to said comment to see what was actually said: > First: it needs to be made clearer why anyone would use this rather than Nacl/Sodium. ... and a comment about how a few test vectors is not a serious cryptographic audit. So it seems that the parent agrees with you, and nobody told anyone to stop doing what we're doing. The thing we (well, I; I don't want to put words in tqbf's mouth) did say repeatedly, is "the answer is still libsodium". It seems like that, too, is something you agree with.
- Cyph0n 10y agoI'm sure that could have been phrased in a way that got the point across without patronizing the submitter. I wonder how many potentially great cryptographers had their ambitions killed off because of statements like this?
- lvh 10y agoWhich patronizing statement? Is "it needs to be made clear..." patronizing? Surely asking why you'd want to use something is reasonable.
- loup-vaillant 10y ago> random-nonce supporting package Wait a minute, what's that? Does it just mean nonces big enough to be random, or something more I should consider for inclusion in Monocypher?
- lvh 10y agoBig enough to be (safely) random. Potentially: NMR.