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I'm not sure they were gambling. My feeling is ghat they were victim of the bias of self judgment regarding the security of the protocol they designed. They ov
by chmike 13y ago
I'm not sure they were gambling. My feeling is ghat they were victim of the bias of self judgment regarding the security of the protocol they designed.
They overlooked some security weakness and didn't see it. They didn't do it on purpose like the NSA. In their eyes, the protocol was perfectly secure and most of it is of course.
The only way to avoid this self judgment bias is to use review by other people.
- ahomescu1 13y ago> In their eyes, the protocol was perfectly secure and most of it is of course. That there is exactly the problem. There is no reason to believe the protocol is secure, and when looking at crypto you start from the assumption that it's "maybe broken", not "perfectly secure". Assuming that some new crypto is secure is hubris.
- makomk 13y agoActually, this security hole is almost exactly what you'd expect well-done deliberate sabotage of the protocol to look like - it's a small, easy to miss and just about plausibly deniable modification of a standard crypto primitive that totally destroys its security. (Though it's a bit weak in the area of plausible deniablity - why use xor rather than some more sensible key derivation function?)
- danabramov 13y agoActually, I'm pretty sure they weren't gambling at all. Pavel previously set up contests with monetary rewards about half the same value for developing a mobile VK app for iOS, Android and WP. It's not a gamble—it is really an expensive way to find holes. What I don't understand is why they don't hire a crypto consultant instead.