Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down

Tyler Durden camera_lumina at hotmail.com
Mon Jun 2 09:30:47 PDT 2003


"Scott Guthery" <sguthery at mobile-mind.com> writes:

> > When I drill down on the many pontifications made by computer
> > security and cryptography experts all I find is given wisdom. Maybe
> > the reason that folks roll their own is because as far as they can see
> > that's what everyone does.  Roll your own then whip out your dick and
> > start swinging around just like the experts.
> >
> > Perhaps I'm not looking in the right places. I wade through papers from
> > the various academic cryptography groups, I hit the bibliographies
> > regularly, I watch the newgroups, and I follow the patent literature.  
>After
> > you blow the smoke away, there's always an "assume a can opener"
> > assumption. The only thing that really differentiates the experts from 
>the
> > naifs is the amount of smoke.

This kind of thinking is similar to the difference between and engineer's 
persepective and that of a mathematician or "pure" scientist. Basically, it 
might not be bad to consider all crypto systems 'insecure' to some extent. 
However, for well-designed cryptosystems the cost of breaking can be made to 
scale with the level of security needed.

-TD

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