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You're missing context because it was deleted by the comment's author. It was claimed that Linus Torvalds was "the authority" and that articles were written by

by ballard 13y ago

You're missing context because it was deleted by the comment's author. It was claimed that Linus Torvalds was "the authority" and that articles were written by non-technical reporters. Schneier is clearly not a non-technical reporter. No claim was made by anyone that Schneier was the one-and-only security god either. Some people worship the ground person P walks on, but it's still just ground. Celebrity doesnt make 2+2 = 5, only for very large values of 2. I do think there is a common antipattern of wanting to rely upon one technology or one authority as a "security oracle," but this goes against holistic, defense-in-depth. The other points are fine, just non-apropos. But since you went there: Does the less elucidatbility (yep that's not a word, but a self-referencing pun) of ECC for the average joe programmer like myself make it any more secure than picking longer RSA keys? ECC seems so much easier to screw up in subtle ways that only leet mathematicians can grasp. Also, the change seems like change for churn's sake to sell more consulting. I used to work with big 4 folks, and there's always a joke a about the latest fad that needs selling, so I'm biased against popular, unjustified change.

tptacek 13y ago
(1) The reality is you probably don't understand all the implications of the RSA problem as well as you think you do either. (2) "You" are just as likely to screw up RSA; the point is, "you" shouldn't be implementing cryptography directly at all, but rather using a well-vetted library. Both RSA and ECC have many viable free options for that. (3) The reason RSA is going away and ECC is replacing it is that RSA is that RSA at acceptable levels of performance is getting too weak, and RSA at acceptable levels of security is too slow for mass deployment. (4) It's hard to take "churn" seriously when change happens once over the course of 15 years. (5) There is no cabal of consultants who get rich selling cryptosystem designs; for instance, for the most part, browser cryptography, email cryptography, and web site cryptography aren't implemented by consultants at all. (If you're wondering: we're not that kind of consultancy.)

by ballard 13y ago

tptacek 13y ago

(1) The reality is you probably don't understand all the implications of the RSA problem as well as you think you do either. (2) "You" are just as likely to screw up RSA; the point is, "you" shouldn't be implementing cryptography directly at all, but rather using a well-vetted library. Both RSA and ECC have many viable free options for that. (3) The reason RSA is going away and ECC is replacing it is that RSA is that RSA at acceptable levels of performance is getting too weak, and RSA at acceptable levels of security is too slow for mass deployment. (4) It's hard to take "churn" seriously when change happens once over the course of 15 years. (5) There is no cabal of consultants who get rich selling cryptosystem designs; for instance, for the most part, browser cryptography, email cryptography, and web site cryptography aren't implemented by consultants at all. (If you're wondering: we're not that kind of consultancy.)