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I typically think of "encryption inside of encryption" as a boondoggle more likely to somehow break things than make things stronger. My confidence in that has

I typically think of "encryption inside of encryption" as a boondoggle more likely to somehow break things than make things stronger. My confidence in that has dropped slightly in the past day.

analogist 10y ago
I'm no expert, but intuitively it would seem that encryption-inside-encryption would be snake oil when they're meant to guard against the same layer/attack vector/threat model: for example, if you nest Serpent inside AES for a single local file encryption operation (ahem, TrueCrypt), that seems very gimmicky. But if the encryption are supposed to protect separate and independent OSI layers or operation steps, then it would seem to me it's fully valid - specifically, in this case: - TLS dissolves inside HTTP-HTTPd endpoints or any reverse proxies, if used - additional SRP-negotiated AES dissolves inside client to the process doing key handling - final "actual" key encryption, handling at-rest encryption, and to make sure it's zero-knowledge to the storage handler They seem to me to be guarding information leakage against very different parts of the key mangement process (storage, manipulation, http transport), and that doesn't seem to be snake oil to me.
- hackinthebochs 10y ago
  >for example, if you nest Serpent inside AES for a single local file encryption operation (ahem, TrueCrypt), that seems very gimmicky. I take it to be insurance against a future vulnerablility discovered in one of the algorithms. For some scenarios it seems like the cost can be worth it. On the other hand, nested hashing has always seemed counter productive as it seems plausible that nesting hash functions can decrease the randomness of the image.
snowwrestler 10y ago
PGP email sent over TLS would be an example of nested encryption that people take for granted. So would E2E encrypted chat systems like iMessage, Signal, and WhatsApp, which encrypt each message on the machine, then use TLS to communicate with servers.

I typically think of "encryption inside of encryption" as a boondoggle more likely to somehow break things than make things stronger. My confidence in that has dropped slightly in the past day.

analogist 10y ago

I'm no expert, but intuitively it would seem that encryption-inside-encryption would be snake oil when they're meant to guard against the same layer/attack vector/threat model: for example, if you nest Serpent inside AES for a single local file encryption operation (ahem, TrueCrypt), that seems very gimmicky. But if the encryption are supposed to protect separate and independent OSI layers or operation steps, then it would seem to me it's fully valid - specifically, in this case: - TLS dissolves inside HTTP-HTTPd endpoints or any reverse proxies, if used - additional SRP-negotiated AES dissolves inside client to the process doing key handling - final "actual" key encryption, handling at-rest encryption, and to make sure it's zero-knowledge to the storage handler They seem to me to be guarding information leakage against very different parts of the key mangement process (storage, manipulation, http transport), and that doesn't seem to be snake oil to me.

hackinthebochs 10y ago
>for example, if you nest Serpent inside AES for a single local file encryption operation (ahem, TrueCrypt), that seems very gimmicky. I take it to be insurance against a future vulnerablility discovered in one of the algorithms. For some scenarios it seems like the cost can be worth it. On the other hand, nested hashing has always seemed counter productive as it seems plausible that nesting hash functions can decrease the randomness of the image.

snowwrestler 10y ago

PGP email sent over TLS would be an example of nested encryption that people take for granted. So would E2E encrypted chat systems like iMessage, Signal, and WhatsApp, which encrypt each message on the machine, then use TLS to communicate with servers.