4 ms·
Age is interesting. After doing extensive reading on the state of the art for file encryption, and collecting dozens of reference articles for further reading f
by andrewmcwatters 4y ago
Age is interesting. After doing extensive reading on the state of the art for file encryption, and collecting dozens of reference articles for further reading for my coworkers to do, I wrote envelope encryption along with a proprietary file encryption standard for a company I previously worked for.
It had only the basic features you’d want for cryptographic agility.
During my reading, I came across age and wanted our business to use it, but it was too early to make that call across the entire business. It had only been released the previous year.
It also missed one crucial feature, which I think is the biggest miss with age: lack of support for AES-256 GCM.
I understand the arguments for not including it.
I also understand that if you want absolutely no serious adoption, it’s fine not to include it.
- tptacek 4y agoSeems unlikely to be true; an obvious counterexample: WireGuard also doesn't support AES, and is wildly popular, including in commercial settings.
- traceroute66 4y ago> lack of support for AES-256 GCM Why do you need AES ? Age uses ChaCha20-Poly1305 which is more than good enough, and has the added benefit of being an algorithm that is optimised for software only implementation and doesn't need hardware support (e.g. AES-NI instruction set).
- _wldu 4y agoMaybe he works for a company that does US government research? Maybe they require NIST approved algorithms. I'm pretty sure that would prevent the use of Age for file encryption.
- judge2020 4y agoGotta have that military-grade encryption with 256 bits of security.