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Deirdre Connolly, Thomas Ptacek, David Adrian

Security Cryptography Whatever

A Technology , Science and Mathematics podcast Explicit

#198 in Technology · 🇮🇳
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About the show

Some cryptography & security people talk about security, cryptography, and whatever else is happening.

Newest episodes

Everybody Is Losing Their Minds About AI Math And Crypto

51 min

The gang talks about what AI getting Good At Math might mean for cryptography, and why public-key cryptography probably isn’t ending. David is on a mission to civilize and claims a crisis of empiricism. He also wrote a blog post about this. Everyone agrees Nadia deserves tokens. “I mean, you could claim that anything's real if the only basis for believing in it is that nobody's proved it doesn't exist!” Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2026/10/27/everybody-is-losing-their-minds-about-ai-math-and-crypto/ Chapters: 00:00 intro 05:19 rumors swirl    12:37 math etiquette 17:11 magical math machines 21:42 diffie-hellman 29:50 finite field 34:45 david aware 42:36 complexity theory 48:40 full disclosure Links: - David’s Blog: https://dadrian.io/blog/posts/everybody-is-losing-their-minds/ - Similar opinions from virgi: https://people.csail.mit.edu/virgi/thoughts.txt - The OpenAI Math Drop: https://github.com/openai/math - Scientific American on the OpenAI math drop: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/openai-unleashes-hundreds-more-math-results-upon-a-field-already-in-shock/ - Derek Thompson on AI’s impact on math: https://www.derekthompson.org/p/i-know-why-the-mathematicians-weep - Sophie Schmieg’s blog connecting elliptic curves and finite field DH: https://keymaterial.net/2025/05/23/there-is-no-diffie-hellman-but-elliptic-curve-diffie-hellman/ - Friend of the show Steve Weiss factored RSA-896 with spare Anthropic capacity: https://saweis.net/posts/rsa-896.html - Alex Clemmer’s tweet about the shortcomings of complexity theory: https://x.com/hausdorff_space/status/2107916908616175701 - Ben Recht (Berkeley ECE) on the FFT improvements showing how complexity theory can be disconnected from real computers:: https://www.argmin.net/p/faster-fourier-transforms - State of the art number field sieve implementation (CADO-NFS): https://cado-nfs.gitlabpages.inria.fr/ - Why 128-bits of symmetric security is enough for quantum resistance: https://words.filip...

AI Lattice Proofs with Chris Peikert

50 min

The robots are at it again, and this time they’re solving, and breaking(?), math and cryptography! Things have been happening in the lattice corner including new leapfrogging complexity results in the closest vector problem (CVP), AND a possible poly-time quantum attack against the dihedral coset problem (DCP) that made everyone freak out for about a week (UPDATE: looks like it’s busted: https://eprint.iacr.org/2026/1693). ALSO, there was an important distinguisher attack against Classic McEliece, which on its face doesn’t sound like a big deal, unless you’re familiar with the track record of efficient distinguishers in the history of code-based cryptography… 😱 To help us make sense  of all this we are joined again by OG friend of the pod Chris Peikert! We had trouble with his audio but tried our best to fix it, apologies. Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2026/08/26/ai-lattice-proofs-with-chris-peikert/ Links: - https://openai.com/index/ten-advances-in-mathematics/ - https://cdn.openai.com/pdf/ten-proofs-oai.pdf - https://x.com/ChrisPeikert/status/2083534770403750025 - https://bsky.app/profile/chrispeikert.bsky.social/post/3msp3boueis2z - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_satisfiability_problem - https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/wordcel-shape-rotator-mathcel - Chen 2024: https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/555 - https://eprint.iacr.org/2026/1630 - https://eprint.iacr.org/2026/1693 - CVP within n^(1/2-ɛ) -  : https://eprint.iacr.org/2026/1655 "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

An Odyssey of Lattice Cryptography with Mark Schultz-Wu

1 hr 17 min

We invited Mark Schultz-Wu on the podcast to talk about the history of lattice cryptography. When lattices are explained in plain english, they are actually quite simple! I don't think any of us have ever seen Deirdre so happy. If you're watching the video version, there's a section that's 6.1 minutes long with no cuts and consists just of Deirdre vigorously agreeing with what Mark is saying while smiling. What a time to be alive. Anyway, we are hosting another happy hour in Vegas between Black Hat and DEF CON! It's sponsored by Teleport! Thank you to Teleport, and dear readers, you should go check them out. Check out our socials or the podcast site to register. Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2026/07/27/lattices-with-mark-schultz-wu/ Links: Mark's IETF Post https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/tls/HznE1IcCjstEjhh4M1p59qX1JlQ/NTRU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTRUThe original lattices are hard paper https://www.scirp.org/reference/referencespapers?referenceid=3401227The original LWE for cryptography paper https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.03703Entropic LWE https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/119Dilithium round 3 submission: https://pq-crystals.org/dilithium/data/dilithium-specification-round3.pdfRecent attacks on Classic McEliece: https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/1694Lectures on post-quantum cryptography from Alfred Menezes (an originator of elliptic curve cryptography) https://www.youtube.com/@cryptography101-alfredFalcon https://csrc.nist.gov/csrc/media/Presentations/2024/falcon/images-media/prest-falcon-pqc2024.pdfRegev: https://cims.nyu.edu/~regev/#researchTightness in Proofs: https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/360.pdf "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

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All episodes

Everybody Is Losing Their Minds About AI Math And Crypto

51 min

The gang talks about what AI getting Good At Math might mean for cryptography, and why public-key cryptography probably isn’t ending. David is on a mission to civilize and claims a crisis of empiricism. He also wrote a blog post about this. Everyone agrees Nadia deserves tokens. “I mean, you could claim that anything's real if the only basis for believing in it is that nobody's proved it doesn't exist!” Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2026/10/27/everybody-is-losing-their-minds-about-ai-math-and-crypto/ Chapters: 00:00 intro 05:19 rumors swirl    12:37 math etiquette 17:11 magical math machines 21:42 diffie-hellman 29:50 finite field 34:45 david aware 42:36 complexity theory 48:40 full disclosure Links: - David’s Blog: https://dadrian.io/blog/posts/everybody-is-losing-their-minds/ - Similar opinions from virgi: https://people.csail.mit.edu/virgi/thoughts.txt - The OpenAI Math Drop: https://github.com/openai/math - Scientific American on the OpenAI math drop: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/openai-unleashes-hundreds-more-math-results-upon-a-field-already-in-shock/ - Derek Thompson on AI’s impact on math: https://www.derekthompson.org/p/i-know-why-the-mathematicians-weep - Sophie Schmieg’s blog connecting elliptic curves and finite field DH: https://keymaterial.net/2025/05/23/there-is-no-diffie-hellman-but-elliptic-curve-diffie-hellman/ - Friend of the show Steve Weiss factored RSA-896 with spare Anthropic capacity: https://saweis.net/posts/rsa-896.html - Alex Clemmer’s tweet about the shortcomings of complexity theory: https://x.com/hausdorff_space/status/2107916908616175701 - Ben Recht (Berkeley ECE) on the FFT improvements showing how complexity theory can be disconnected from real computers:: https://www.argmin.net/p/faster-fourier-transforms - State of the art number field sieve implementation (CADO-NFS): https://cado-nfs.gitlabpages.inria.fr/ - Why 128-bits of symmetric security is enough for quantum resistance: https://words.filip...

AI Lattice Proofs with Chris Peikert

50 min

The robots are at it again, and this time they’re solving, and breaking(?), math and cryptography! Things have been happening in the lattice corner including new leapfrogging complexity results in the closest vector problem (CVP), AND a possible poly-time quantum attack against the dihedral coset problem (DCP) that made everyone freak out for about a week (UPDATE: looks like it’s busted: https://eprint.iacr.org/2026/1693). ALSO, there was an important distinguisher attack against Classic McEliece, which on its face doesn’t sound like a big deal, unless you’re familiar with the track record of efficient distinguishers in the history of code-based cryptography… 😱 To help us make sense  of all this we are joined again by OG friend of the pod Chris Peikert! We had trouble with his audio but tried our best to fix it, apologies. Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2026/08/26/ai-lattice-proofs-with-chris-peikert/ Links: - https://openai.com/index/ten-advances-in-mathematics/ - https://cdn.openai.com/pdf/ten-proofs-oai.pdf - https://x.com/ChrisPeikert/status/2083534770403750025 - https://bsky.app/profile/chrispeikert.bsky.social/post/3msp3boueis2z - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_satisfiability_problem - https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/wordcel-shape-rotator-mathcel - Chen 2024: https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/555 - https://eprint.iacr.org/2026/1630 - https://eprint.iacr.org/2026/1693 - CVP within n^(1/2-ɛ) -  : https://eprint.iacr.org/2026/1655 "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

An Odyssey of Lattice Cryptography with Mark Schultz-Wu

1 hr 17 min

We invited Mark Schultz-Wu on the podcast to talk about the history of lattice cryptography. When lattices are explained in plain english, they are actually quite simple! I don't think any of us have ever seen Deirdre so happy. If you're watching the video version, there's a section that's 6.1 minutes long with no cuts and consists just of Deirdre vigorously agreeing with what Mark is saying while smiling. What a time to be alive. Anyway, we are hosting another happy hour in Vegas between Black Hat and DEF CON! It's sponsored by Teleport! Thank you to Teleport, and dear readers, you should go check them out. Check out our socials or the podcast site to register. Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2026/07/27/lattices-with-mark-schultz-wu/ Links: Mark's IETF Post https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/tls/HznE1IcCjstEjhh4M1p59qX1JlQ/NTRU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTRUThe original lattices are hard paper https://www.scirp.org/reference/referencespapers?referenceid=3401227The original LWE for cryptography paper https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.03703Entropic LWE https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/119Dilithium round 3 submission: https://pq-crystals.org/dilithium/data/dilithium-specification-round3.pdfRecent attacks on Classic McEliece: https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/1694Lectures on post-quantum cryptography from Alfred Menezes (an originator of elliptic curve cryptography) https://www.youtube.com/@cryptography101-alfredFalcon https://csrc.nist.gov/csrc/media/Presentations/2024/falcon/images-media/prest-falcon-pqc2024.pdfRegev: https://cims.nyu.edu/~regev/#researchTightness in Proofs: https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/360.pdf "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Trump's Golden Post-Quantum EO(s)

56 min

The dear leader has actually bleated out some not-dumb executive orders (EOs) to accelerate adoption of post-quantum crypto for the US government! This looks to be in response to a flurry of advancements in quantum computing and quantum attack algorithms a few months ago. We cram legalize into our eyeballs— plus, ECDSA.fail! Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZwQpN_F6P8 Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2026/07/02/trumps-golden-post-quantum-eos Links: - The EO https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/06/securing-the-nation-against-advanced-cryptographic-attacks/ - CNSA2 https://media.defense.gov/2022/Sep/07/2003071836/-1/-1/0/CSI_CNSA_2.0_FAQ_.PDF - https://media.defense.gov/2025/May/30/2003728741/-1/-1/0/CSA_CNSA_2.0_ALGORITHMS.PDF - https://www.ecdsa.fail/ - https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/safety-security/cryptography-migration-timeline/ - https://blog.cloudflare.com/post-quantum-roadmap/ - https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/research/neutral-atom-quantum-computers/ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedRAMP - https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/06/ushering-in-the-next-frontier-of-quantum-innovation/ - https://blog.trailofbits.com/2026/04/17/we-beat-googles-zero-knowledge-proof-of-quantum-cryptanalysis/ - https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=9861 "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Facing the Vulnpocalypse with lcamtuf

1 hr 11 min

We talk to Michał Zalewski (lcamtuf) about the vulnpocalypse and if we even need fuzzers anymore. This episode may be export controlled at a future date. Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI9CSgB4p9o Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2026/06/14/facing-the-vulnpocalypse-with-lcamtuf https://github.com/google/aflhttps://www.reddit.com/r/claude/comments/1tqtenf/anthropic_said_today_that_mythos_is_coming_to_all/https://github.com/google/clusterfuzzhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradoxhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XZ_Utils_backdoorhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brighton_hotel_bombinghttps://curl.se/https://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/patches/7.8/common/025_sack.patch.sighttps://www.wired.com/story/last-pass-vulnerability-password-safe/https://nostarch.com/tangledwebhttps://nostarch.com/silence.htmhttps://nostarch.com/practical-doomsdayhttps://nostarch.com/secret-life-of-circuitshttps://www.youtube.com/c/3blue1brown "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

AI Finds Vulns You Can't With Nicholas Carlini

1 hr 16 min

Returning champion Nicholas Carlini comes back to talk about using Claude for vulnerability research, and the current vulnpocalypse. It's all very high-brow stuff, and the gang learns some bitter lessons. Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IDbFLu9Ug8 Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2026/03/25/ai-bug-finding/ Links: - https://red.anthropic.com/2026/zero-days/ - https://unpromptedcon.org/ - Black-hat LLMs   - https://red.anthropic.com/2026/firefox/ "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Standardizing Pure PQC

8 min

Standardizing cryptography involves a lot of opinions. Luckily, the gamer presidents are on it. Come on, you all know the drill. This is the last time I do this. "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Python Cryptography Breaks Up with OpenSSL with Paul Kehrer and Alex Gaynor

1 hr 12 min

The Python cryptography module, pyca/cryptography, has mostly been a sane wrapper around a pile of C, so that users get performant cryptography on the many, many platforms Python targets. Therefore its maintainers, Alex Gaynor and Paul Kehrer, have become intimately familiar with OpenSSL. Recently, they declared that after many years of trying to make it work, they announced pyca/cryptography would be moving away from OpenSSL when supporting new functionality and exploring adding other backends instead. We invited them on to tell us about what has happened to OpenSSL, even after the investments and improvements following Heartbleed. No guests on this pod represent anyone besides themselves. Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEKBHI3rodY Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2026/02/01/python-cryptography-breaks-up-with-openssl Links: - https://cryptography.io/en/latest/statements/state-of-openssl/ - Py Cryptography: https://cryptography.io - https://archive.openssl-conference.org/2025/presentations/Alex_Gaynor_Paul_Kehrer_The_Python_Cryptographic_Authoritys_OpenSSL_Experience.pdf - https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2025/08/16/alex-gaynor/ - https://packages.gentoo.org/packages/media-libs/libsdl - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUIguklWwx0 - https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc9180/ - https://docs.openssl.org/3.3/man3/OSSL_PARAM/ - https://openssl.foundation/ - https://github.com/openssl/openssl/issues/17064 - https://www.feistyduck.com/newsletter/issue_132_openssl_performance_still_under_scrutiny - https://github.com/topazproject/topaz - https://github.com/actions/runner/issues/1069 - https://crystalhotsauce.com/ - https://openssl-library.org/news/vulnerabilities/#CVE-2025-15467 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus - https://boringssl.googlesource.com/boringssl/+/aa202db1d7091b88b80f0a58c630c5c1aefc817d - https://www.ibm.com/products/open-sdk-for-rust-aix - https://dadrian.io/blog/posts/corporate-support-xz/ - https...

The IACR Can't Decrypt with Matt Bernhard

56 min

The International Association of Cryptologic Research held their regular election using secure voting software called Helios…and lost the keys to decrypt the results, leaving them with no choice but to throw out the vote and call a new election. Hilarity ensues. We welcome special guest Matt Bernhard who actually works on secure voting systems to explain which bits are homomorphically additive or not. Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euw_yqAQFI8 Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2025/12/30/iacr-helios Links: - NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/21/world/cryptography-group-lost-election-results.html - IACR Memo: https://www.iacr.org/news/item/27138 - https://www.iacr.org/elections/ - https://vote.heliosvoting.org/faq - https://github.com/Election-Tech-Initiative/electionguard - https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/sec08/tech/full_papers/adida/adida.pdf - https://www.iacr.org/elections/eVoting/about-helios.html - https://www.iacr.org/elections/eVoting/ - https://crypto.ethz.ch/publications/files/CrGeSc97b.pdf - https://electionguard.vote/ - https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/1901 - https://freeandfair.us/blog/open-free-election-technology/ - https://www.starvoting.org/ - https://mbernhard.com/ "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Apple’s Memory Integrity Enforcement

56 min

Apple announced its new suite of memory security improvements from the top of the stack all the way to the bottom, so we dug through what they did and how they did it (performantly).  Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FJwOI2PliU Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2025/10/31/apple-mie Links: - https://security.apple.com/blog/memory-integrity-enforcement/ - Secure Page Table Monitor and Trusted Execution Monitor: https://support.apple.com/guide/security/operating-system-integrity-sec8b776536b/1/web/1#secd022396fb - https://security.apple.com/blog/towards-the-next-generation-of-xnu-memory-safety/ - https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/adopting-type-aware-memory-allocation - https://security.apple.com/blog/what-if-we-had-sockpuppet-in-ios16/ - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.09272 - https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2023/11/first-handset-with-mte-on-market.html - https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/adopting-type-aware-memory-allocation - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.09272 - https://spectreattack.com/spectre.pdf "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Stop Using Encrypted Email with William Woodruff

1 hr 11 min

There was a bug in an OpenPGP library which finally gave us an excuse to tear encrypted email via PGP to shreds. Our special guest William Woodruff joined us to help explain the vuln and indulge our gnashing of teeth on why email was never meant to be encrypted and how other modern tools do the job much, much better. Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoL3LfIozJo Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2025/08/22/stop-using-encrypted-email-with-william-woodruff Links: - William Woodruff: https://yossarian.net/ - https://www.latacora.com/blog/2020/02/19/stop-using-encrypted/ - https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4880 - https://codeanlabs.com/blog/research/cve-2025-47934-spoofing-openpgp-js-signatures/ - https://www.mailpile.is/blog/2014-10-07_Some_Thoughts_on_GnuPG.html - https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9580.html - https://www.tumblr.com/accidentallyquadratic - https://www.w3.org/TR/xmldsig-core/ - https://support.yubico.com/hc/en-us/articles/360013790259-Using-Your-YubiKey-with-OpenPGP - https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9580.html#name-signature-packet-type-id-2 - https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9580.html#name-key-derivation-function - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S/MIME - https://delta.chat - https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ - https://phakeobj.netlify.app/posts/gigacage/ - https://x.com/dakami -----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE----- U2FsdGVkX1/OF+EynrukxZnSAXwgksTGSIkQ6s4X9Ns7JgQ2ZymeQAp8uD09MtkJ ce5HOKcjhUkZOMbJl3I5iOcPgSxCGG8KccNXcY6msdAD3pdlmR5cWJpn6+qGwqvo KCsj+DYwFW6tltLBXP/cdnh9z8ktRXqfwQW+uhB5Zcaw28pzmNz/rA0cb0cLGiaX uxp9A0iWhwf2gFpUSiIJyXGLJAc8eeI1LXfISXi7IkowDMp4x+iDbOlrR0d6zCkp IKpNGReokcWhUrlGVONiVUrApZS2fvxQoHgaIvwLl5FM1WdrbQIV41DB+rgtZJhE NSgMkhQ0y1bBAOM25ykRjC/UUS/q0ddXz1ThGi6vRIp4/8vkqOsEXHv5M1oT9FQT UGK3zyffq0FqGBFj6kwVZ0X0JQFmtydZKhSYEPE9s4mcfvxKNQsySK7wlxMerKrf f9ZxOR7rHjE3IfqtoizX8EH+MYy2lRCoCKeLbZd0G1LcVhBhRpoXfqL2IboAWqT+ U8R2eyts7qiNuWQUtmCzKNmaJMS+1M+pVN5ZXAdSqK2OJVJZgO8Ie7q4HVZeAd3G HzP7owf+VerCguOYN41...

Alex Gaynor

1 hr 25 min

We chat with friend of the pod and special guest Alex Gaynor, former deputy chief technologist at the FTC and all around good Security Person™. Join for nerdery about WebAuthn, stay for accidentally melting down GitHub APIs around November 2020!  Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBoGvyvsSi4 Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2025/08/16/alex-gaynor Links: - https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/no-take-only-throw - https://alexgaynor.net/2025/jan/13/challenges-funding-open-source/ - https://alexgaynor.net/2025/apr/08/putting-a-price-tag-on-open-source/ - https://dadrian.io/blog/posts/corporate-support-xz/ - https://alex.github.io/nyt-2020-election-scraper/battleground-state-changes.html - https://github.com/alex/nyt-2020-election-scraper "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Vegas, Baby!

1 hr 0 min

We’re throwing a party in Vegas! Someone called it SCWPodCon last year, and the name stuck. It’s sponsored by Teleport, the infrastructure identity company. Get SSO for SSH! If Thomas was here, I’m sure he’d tell you that Fly.io uses Teleport internally. Oh also there's some thing called Black..pill? Black Pool? Something like that happening in Vegas, with crypto talks, so we chatted about them a bit, plus some other stuff SCWPodCon 2025: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/events/blackhat Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2025/07/29/vegas-baby/ Links: - Fault Injection attacks on PQCS signatures: https://www.blackhat.com/us-25/briefings/schedule/index.html#bypassing-pqc-signature-verification-with-fault-injection-dilithium-xmss-sphincs-46362 - Another attack on TETRA: https://www.blackhat.com/us-25/briefings/schedule/index.html#2-cops-2-broadcasting-tetra-end-to-end-under-scrutiny-46143 - Attacks on SCADA / ICS protocols (OPC UA): https://www.blackhat.com/us-25/briefings/schedule/index.html#no-vpn-needed-cryptographic-attacks-against-the-opc-ua-protocol-44760 - Attacks on Nostr:  https://www.blackhat.com/us-25/briefings/schedule/index.html#not-sealed-practical-attacks-on-nostr-a-decentralized-censorship-resistant-protocol-45726 - https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostr - https://eurosp2025.ieee-security.org/program.html - https://cispa.de/en/research/publications/84648-attacking-and-fixing-the-android-protected-confirmation-protocol - https://hal.science/hal-05038009v2/file/main.pdf - 8-bit, abacus, and a dog: https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/1237.pdf - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dlsa9EBKDGI - https://www.quantamagazine.org/computer-scientists-figure-out-how-to-prove-lies-20250709/ - https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/118 "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

E2EE Storage Done Right with Matilda Backendal Jonas Hofmann and Kien Tuong Truong

1 hr 2 min

It seems like everyone that tries to deploy end-to-end encrypted cloud storage seems to mess it up, often in new and creative ways. Our special guests Matilda Backendal, Jonas Hofmann, and Kien Tuong Truong give us a tour through the breakage and discuss a new formal model of how to actually build a secure E2EE storage system. Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/sizLiK_byCw Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2025/05/19/e2ee-storage/ Links: - https://brokencloudstorage.info - https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/1616.pdf - https://www.sync.com - https://www.pcloud.com - https://icedrive.net - https://seafile.com - https://tresorit.com - https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/989.pdf "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Picking Quantum Resistant Algorithms

14 min

Migrating the US government to quantum-resistant cryptography is hard, luckily the gamer presidents are on it. This episode is extremely not safe for work, nor does it reflect the political opinions of, well, anybody. "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Apple Pulls Advanced Data Protection in the UK with Matt Green and Joe Hall

48 min

Apple has pulled the availability of their opt-in iCloud end-to-end encryption feature, called Advanced Data Protection, in the UK. This doesn't only affect UK Apple users, however.  To help us make sense of this surprising move from the fruit company, we got Matt Green, Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins, and Joe Hall, Distinguished Technologist at the Internet Society, on the horn.  Recorded Saturday February 22nd, 2025. Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2025/02/24/apple-pulls-adp-in-uk/ Watch episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/LAn_yOGUkR0 Links: - https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/apples-cloud-key-vault-and-secure-law-enforcement-access - https://www.androidcentral.com/how-googles-backup-encryption-works-good-bad-and-ugly - https://gdpr.eu/right-to-be-forgotten/ - https://www.legislation.gov.uk/id/ukpga/2024/9 - https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-censorship-data.html - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Typhoon - Salt Typhoon: https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/news/strengthening-americas-resilience-against-prc-cyber-threats - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-21/apple-removes-end-to-end-encryption-feature-from-uk-after-backdoor-order - https://support.apple.com/en-us/102651 "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Cryptanalyzing LLMs with Nicholas Carlini

1 hr 20 min

'Let us model our large language model as a hash function—'  Sold. Our special guest Nicholas Carlini joins us to discuss differential cryptanalysis on LLMs and other attacks, just as the ones that made OpenAI turn off some features, hehehehe. Watch episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/vZ64xPI2Rc0 Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2025/01/28/cryptanalyzing-llms-with-nicholas-carlini/ Links: - https://nicholas.carlini.com - “Stealing Part of a Production Language Model”: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2403.06634 - ‘Why I attack"’: https://nicholas.carlini.com/writing/2024/why-i-attack.html - “Cryptanalytic Extraction of Neural Network Models”, CRYPTO 2020: https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.04884 - “Stochastic Parrots”: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3442188.3445922 - https://help.openai.com/en/articles/5247780-using-logit-bias-to-alter-token-probability-with-the-openai-api - https://community.openai.com/t/temperature-top-p-and-top-k-for-chatbot-responses/295542 - https://opensource.org/license/mit - https://github.com/madler/zlib - https://ai.meta.com/blog/yann-lecun-ai-model-i-jepa/ - https://nicholas.carlini.com/writing/2024/how-i-use-ai.html "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Biden’s Cyber-Everything Bagel with Carole House

57 min

Just a few days before turning off the lights, the Biden administration dropped a huge cybersecurity executive order including a lot of good stuff, that hopefully [cross your fingers, knock wood, spin around three times and spit] will last into future administrations. We snagged some time with Carole House, outgoing Special Advisor and Acting Senior Director for Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure Policy, National Security Council in the Biden-Harris White House, to give us a brain dump. And now due to popular demand, with video of our actual human¹ faces! https://youtu.be/Pqw0W2crQiM Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2025/01/20/bidens-cyber-everything-bagel-carole-house/ Links: - https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2025-01470 - https://www.wired.com/story/biden-executive-order-cybersecurity-ai-and-more/ - 2022 EO: https://archive.ph/hvzWd - 2023 EO: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/M-23-16-Update-to-M-22-18-Enhancing-Software-Security-1.pdf - 2021 EO: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/05/17/2021-10460/improving-the-nations-cybersecurity - NIST SSDF: https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/SpecialPublications/NIST.SP.800-218.pdf - https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2015/04/02/2015-07788/blocking-the-property-of-certain-persons-engaging-in-significant-malicious-cyber-enabled-activities - IEEPA: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2023-title50/pdf/USCODE-2023-title50-chap35-sec1701.pdf ¹ Actual human faces not guaranteed in all cases "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Quantum Willow with John Schanck and Samuel Jacques

53 min

THE QUANTUM COMPUTERS ARE COMING...right? We got Samuel Jacques and John Schanck at short notice to answer that question plus a bunch of other about error correcting codes, logical qubits, T-gates, and more about Google's new quantum computer Willow. Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2024/12/18/quantum-willow Links: - https://blog.google/technology/research/google-willow-quantum-chip/  - https://research.google/blog/making-quantum-error-correction-work/ - https://blog.google/technology/google-deepmind/alphaqubit-quantum-error-correction/   - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08449-y - Sam’s ‘Landscape of Quantum Computing’ chart: https://sam-jaques.appspot.com/quantum\_landscape\_2024   - The above, originally published in 2021: https://sam-jaques.appspot.com/quantum\_landscape - https://sam-jaques.appspot.com - https://jmschanck.info/ "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Dual_EC_DRBG with Justin Schuh and Matthew Green

1 hr 7 min

Nothing we have ever recorded on SCW has brought so much joy to David. However, at several points during the episode, we may have witnessed Matthew Green's soul leave his body. Our esteemed guests Justin Schuh and Matt Green joined us to debate whether `Dual_EC_DRBG` was intentionally backdoored by the NSA or 'just' a major fuckup. Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2024/12/07/dual-ec-drbg Links: - Dicky George at InfiltrateCon 2014, 'Life at Both Ends of the Barrel - An NSA Targeting Retrospective': [https://youtu.be/qq-LCyRp6bU?si=MyTBKomkIVaxSy1Q](https://youtu.be/qq-LCyRp6bU?si=MyTBKomkIVaxSy1Q) - Dicky George: [https://www.nsa.gov/Press-Room/Digital-Media-Center/Biographies/Biography-View-Page/Article/3330261/richard-dickie-george/](https://www.nsa.gov/Press-Room/Digital-Media-Center/Biographies/Biography-View-Page/Article/3330261/richard-dickie-george/) - NYTimes on Sigint Enabling Project: [https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/09/05/us/documents-reveal-nsa-campaign-against-encryption.html](https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/09/05/us/documents-reveal-nsa-campaign-against-encryption.html) - On the Practical Exploitability of Dual EC in TLS Implementations: [https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/usenixsecurity14/sec14-paper-checkoway.pdf](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/usenixsecurity14/sec14-paper-checkoway.pdf) - Wired - Researchers Solve Juniper Backdoor Mystery; Signs Point to NSA [https://www.wired.com/2015/12/researchers-solve-the-juniper-mystery-and-they-say-its-partially-the-nsas-fault/](https://www.wired.com/2015/12/researchers-solve-the-juniper-mystery-and-they-say-its-partially-the-nsas-fault/) - ProPublica - Revealed: The NSA's Secret Campaign to Crack, Undermine Internet Security [https://www.propublica.org/article/the-nsas-secret-campaign-to-crack-undermine-internet-encryption](https://www.propublica.org/article/the-nsas-secret-campaign-to-crack-undermin...

A Little Bit of Rust Goes a Long Way with Android's Jeff Vander Stoep

1 hr 13 min

You may not be rewriting the world in Rust, but if you follow the findings of the Android team and our guest Jeff Vander Stoep, you'll drive down your memory-unsafety vulnerabilities more than 2X below the industry average over time! 🎉 Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2024/10/15/a-little-bit-of-rust-goes-a-long-way/ Links: - https://security.googleblog.com/2024/09/eliminating-memory-safety-vulnerabilities-Android.html - “Safe Coding”: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3651621 - “effectiveness of security design”: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/16LZ6T-tcjgp3T8_N3m0pa5kNA1DwIsuMcQYDhpMU7uU/edit#slide=id.g3e7cac054a_0_89 - https://security.googleblog.com/2024/02/improving-interoperability-between-rust-and-c.html - https://github.com/google/crubit - https://github.com/google/autocxx - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stagefright_(bug) - https://security.googleblog.com/2021/04/rust-in-android-platform.html - https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/docs/security/rule-of-2.md - https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity22/presentation/alexopoulos -https://kb.meinbergglobal.com/kb/time_sync/ntp/ntp_vulnerabilities_reported_2023-04 - https://blog.isosceles.com/the-legacy-of-stagefright/ - https://research.google/pubs/secure-by-design-googles-perspective-on-memory-safety/ - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrrH2lcl9ew - https://source.android.com/docs/setup/build/rust/building-rust-modules/overview - https://github.com/rust-lang/rust-bindgen - https://security.googleblog.com/2021/06/rustc-interop-in-android-platform.html "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Campaign Security with [REDACTED]

1 hr 23 min

With the 2024 United States Presidential Election right around the corner, we talk to an unnamed guest who has worked on cybersecurity for political campaigns in the United States since 2004. We recorded this in late August, 2024. Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2024/10/13/campaign-security/ Links: - Active Measures by Thomas Rind: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374287269/activemeasures - Aurora: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation\_Aurora - Google APP announcement, October 2017: https://www.wired.com/story/google-advanced-protection-locks-down-accounts/ - XXD: https://linux.die.net/man/1/xxd - Adobe Reader October 2016 Security Update: https://helpx.adobe.com/security/products/acrobat/apsb16-33.html "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Telegram with Matthew Green

1 hr 4 min

We finally have an excuse to tear down Telegram! Their CEO got arrested by the French, apparently not because the cryptography in Telegram is bad, but special guest Matt Green joined us to talk about how the cryptography is bad anyway, and you probably shouldn't use Telegram as a secure messenger of any kind! Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2024/09/06/telegram Links: - https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2024/08/25/telegram-is-not-really-an-encrypted-messaging-app/ - Lavabit / Ladar Levinson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit - Pavel Durov indictment statement from French authorities: https://www.tribunal-de-paris.justice.fr/sites/default/files/2024-08/2024-08-28%20-%20CP%20TELEGRAM%20mise%20en%20examen.pdf - MTProto 2.0 protocol spec: https://core.telegram.org/api/end-to-end - https://words.filippo.io/dispatches/telegram-ecdh/ - MTProto 1.0 (old no longer used): - https://web.archive.org/web/20131220000537/https://core.telegram.org/api/end-to-end#key-generation - OTR: https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/otr-wpes.pdf - AES and sha2 used in ‘Infinite Garble Extension’ mode: https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/1177.pdf - Four Attacks and a Proof for Telegram: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=9833666 - History of Telegram e2ee chats availability: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegram_(software)#Architecture - https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2023/01/27/threema/ - https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2022/11/02/Matrix-with-Martin-Albrecht-Dan-Jones/ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_(protocol), introduced in September 2014 "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Summertime Sadness

57 min

Are you going to be in Vegas during BlackHat / DEF CON? We're hosting a mixer, sponsored by Observa! We have limited capacity, so please only register if you can actually come. Location details are in the confirmation email. Tickets will be released in batches, so if you get waitlisted, there's a good chance you still get in. Looking forward to seeing you in Vegas! Ticket Link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/scwpod-vegas-2024-tickets-946939099337 We talk about CrowdStrike in this episode, but we know we made some mistakes: The sys files may be code in addition to data.The bug might be bigger than "just" a null pointer exception.Luckily, none of that is actually relevant to the main issues we discuss. Show page: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2024/07/24/summertime-sadness/ Other Links: https://csrc.nist.gov/projects/post-quantum-cryptography/post-quantum-cryptography-standardizationhttps://dadrian.io/blog/posts/pqc-signatures-2024/https://dadrian.io/blog/posts/cto/https://www.blackhat.com/us-24/briefings/schedule/https://terrapin-attack.com/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AqayGm0_pwMore like ClownStrike, amirite? "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Zero Day Markets with Mark Dowd

1 hr 25 min

We have Mark Dowd on, founder of Aziumuth Security and one of the authors of The Art of Software Security Assessment, to talk about the market for zero day vulnerabilities, and how mitigations affect monetizing offensive security work. Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2024/06/24/mdowd/ Links: https://www.azimuthsecurity.com/https://www.vigilantlabs.com/https://github.com/mdowd79/presentations/blob/main/bluehat2023-mdowd-final.pdfhttps://i.blackhat.com/USA21/Wednesday-Handouts/us-21-Hack-Different-Pwning-IOS-14-With-Generation-Z-Bug-wp.pdfhttps://i.blackhat.com/USA-19/Wednesday/us-19-Shwartz-Selling-0-Days-To-Governments-And-Offensive-Security-Companies.pdf "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

ekr

1 hr 48 min

iykyk Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2024/05/25/ekr/ Links: - https://hovav.net/ucsd/dist/draft-shacham-tls-fasttrack-00.txt - https://crypto.stanford.edu/~dabo/pubs/papers/fasttrack.pdf - https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8446 - SoK: SCT Auditing in Certificate Transparency: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2203.01661 - A hard look at Certificate Transparency, Part I: Transparency Systems: https://educatedguesswork.org/posts/transparency-part-1/ - A hard look at Certificate Transparency: CT in Reality: https://educatedguesswork.org/posts/transparency-part-2/ - E2EE on the web: is the web really that bad? https://emilymstark.com/2024/02/09/e2ee-on-the-web-is-the-web-really-that-bad.html - Launching Default End-to-End Encryption on Messenger: https://about.fb.com/news/2023/12/default-end-to-end-encryption-on-messenger/ - ekr's newsletter: https://educatedguesswork.org - Over 25 years of ekr RFCs: https://www.rfc-editor.org/search/rfc_search_detail.php?sortkey=Date&sorting=DESC&page=All&author=rescorla&pubstatus[]=Any&pub_date_type=any Subscribe to his newsletter at https://educatedguesswork.org/ "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

STIR/SHAKEN with Paul Grubbs and Josh Brown

1 hr 1 min

Josh Brown and Paul Grubbs join us to describe how those damned spam calls work, and how STIR/SHAKEN is supposed to try to stop them, but have other privacy and security implications as well.  Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2024/04/30/stir-shaken/ Links:  - https://iacr.org/submit/files/slides/2024/rwc/rwc2024/98/slides.pdf - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3trxXF0-fRU - Paul Grubbs: https://web.eecs.umich.edu/~paulgrub/ "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Cryptography Tier List

19 min

(NSFW) Three AI-generated guests rank cryptography things into a tier list. Play along at home and make your own tier list: https://tiermaker.com/create/cryptography-15683166 This episode is definitely not safe for work and definitely a parody. Do not base your decision in the 2024 election off of this podcast episode. No campaigns have endorsed this podcast. "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Post-Quantum iMessage with Douglas Stebila

55 min

Apple iMessage is getting a big upgrade! Not only are they rolling out ratcheting, but they’re going post-quantum, AND they’re doing post-quantum ratcheting! Douglas Stebila joined us to talk about his security analysis of the new PQ3 protocol update and not indulge our wild Apple speculations: Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2024/03/03/post-quantum-imessage-with-douglas-stebila/ Links: - https://security.apple.com/blog/imessage-pq3/ - Security analysis of the iMessage PQ3 protocol https://security.apple.com/assets/files/A_Formal_Analysis_of_the_iMessage_PQ3_Messaging_Protocol_Basin_et_al.pdf - Ratcheting design: https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/220.pdf - When Messages are Keys: Is HMAC a dual-PRF?: https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/861.pdf - Real World Deniability in Messaging: https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/403.pdf - Padmé: https://www.petsymposium.org/2019/files/papers/issue4/popets-2019-0056.pdf - Max Headroom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYdpOjletnc - Extended Canetti-Krawczyk model: https://iacr.org/archive/eurocrypt2001/20450451.pdf - Douglas Stebila: https://www.douglas.stebila.ca/ "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

High-assurance Post-Quantum Crypto with Franziskus Kiefer and Karthik Bhargavan

56 min

We welcome Franziskus and Karthik from Cryspen to discuss their new high-assurance implementation of ML-KEM (the final form of Kyber), discussing how formal methods can both help provide correctness guarantees, security assurances, and performance wins for your crypto code! Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2024/01/29/high-assurance-kyber/ Links: - https://cryspen.com/post/ml-kem-implementation/ - https://github.com/cryspen/libcrux/ - https://github.com/formosa-crypto/libjade - https://cryspen.com/post/pqxdh/ - https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/1933.pdf - Franziskus Kiefer: https://franziskuskiefer.de/ - Karthik Bhargavan: https://bhargavan.info/ "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Encrypting Facebook Messenger with Jon Millican and Timothy Buck

59 min

Facebook Messenger has finally been end-to-end encrypted, a couple of years after Mark Zuckerberg announced it! Plus Instagram DMs are trialing ephemeral E2EE DMs too! We invited on Jon Millican and Timothy Buck from Meta to discuss this major cross-platform endeavor, and how David Bowie fits into their personal Labyrinth. Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2023/12/28/e2ee-fb-messenger/ Links: - https://www.facebook.com/notes/2420600258234172 - https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/1044.pdf - https://engineering.fb.com/2023/12/06/security/building-end-to-end-security-for-messenger/ - https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/6/23991501/facebook-messenger-default-end-to-end-encryption-meta - https://www.threads.net/@jonmillican/post/C0kQPAyoFpr - https://engineering.fb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/MessengerEnd-to-EndEncryptionOverview_12-6-2023.pdf - https://engineering.fb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/TheLabyrinthEncryptedMessageStorageProtocol_12-6-2023.pdf - https://engineering.fb.com/2022/03/10/security/code-verify/ - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/code-verify/llohflklppcaghdpehpbklhlfebooeog "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Attacking Lattice-based Cryptography with Martin Albrecht

57 min

Returning champion Martin Albrecht joins us to help explain how we measure the security of lattice-based cryptosystems like Kyber and Dilithium against attackers. QRAM, BKZ, LLL, oh my! Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2023/11/13/lattice-attacks/ Links: - https://pq-crystals.org/kyber/index.shtml - https://pq-crystals.org/dilithium/index.shtml - https://eprint.iacr.org/2019/930.pdf - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_integer_solution_problem - Frodo: https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/659 - https://csrc.nist.gov/CSRC/media/Events/third-pqc-standardization-conference/documents/accepted-papers/ribeiro-saber-pq-key-pqc2021.pdf - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermite_normal_form - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagner%E2%80%93Fischer_algorithm - https://www.math.auckland.ac.nz/~sgal018/crypto-book/ch18.pdf - https://eprint.iacr.org/2019/1161 - QRAM: https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.10310 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenstra%E2%80%93Lenstra%E2%80%93Lov%C3%A1sz_lattice_basis_reduction_algorithm - MATZOV improved dual lattice attack: https://zenodo.org/records/6412487 - https://eprint.iacr.org/2008/504.pdf - https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/302.pdf "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Signal's Post-Quantum PQXDH, Same-Origin Policy, E2EE in the Browser Revisted

1 hr 19 min

We're back! Signal rolled out a protocol change to be post-quantum resilient! Someone was caught intercepting Jabber TLS via certificate transparency! Was the same-origin policy in web browers just a dirty hack all along? Plus secure message format formalisms, and even more beating of the dead horse that is E2EE in the browser. Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2023/11/07/PQXDH-etc Links: - https://zfnd.org/so-you-want-to-build-an-end-to-end-encrypted-web-app/ - https://github.com/superfly/macaroon - https://cryspen.com/post/pqxdh/ - https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/1390.pdf "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

'Jerry Solinas deserves a raise' with Steve Weis

57 min

We explore how the NIST curve parameter seeds were generated, as best we can, with returning champion Steve Weis! “At the point where we find an intelligible English string that generates the NIST P-curve seeds, nobody serious is going to take the seed provenance concerns seriously anymore.” Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2023/10/12/the-nist-curves Links: - Steve’s post: https://saweis.net/posts/nist-curve-seed-origins.html - ANSI X9.62 ECDSA: https://safecurves.cr.yp.to/grouper.ieee.org/groups/1363/private/x9-62-09-20-98.pdf / FIPS 186-2 https://csrc.nist.gov/files/pubs/fips/186-2/final/docs/fips186-2.pdf - “A RIDDLE WRAPPED IN AN ENIGMA”: https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/1018.pdf - https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/01/nsa-official-support-of-backdoored-dual_ec_drbg-was-regrettable/ - https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/origin-of-fips-186-4-elliptic-curves-over-prime-field-seed-parameters-national-institute-of-standards-and-technology-78756/ - https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/origin-of-fips-186-4-elliptic-curves-over-prime-field-seed-parameters-national-security-agency-78755/ - Filippo’s bounty: https://words.filippo.io/dispatches/seeds-bounty/ - Recommendations for Discrete Logarithm-based Cryptography: Elliptic Curve Domain Parameters - NIST 800-186 with Curve25519 and friends - RFC 8422: Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) Cipher Suites for Transport Layer Security (TLS) Versions 1.2 and Earlier - https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4492#section-6 - https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2017/12/19/the-strange-story-of-extended-random/ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullrun_(decryption_program) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSAFE - https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/08/04/is-extended-random-malicious/ "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Cruel Summer: hybrid signatures, Downfall, Zenbleed, 2G downgrades

58 min

We're back from our summer vacation! We're covering a bunch of stuff we saw and did: Transcript:  https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2023/09/13/cruel-summer/ Links: - Zenbleed: https://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/zenbleed.html - Downfall: https://downfall.page - Post-quantum Yubikeys: https://security.googleblog.com/2023/08/toward-quantum-resilient-security-keys.html "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Why do we think anything is secure, with Steve Weis

46 min

What does P vs NP have to do with cryptography? Why do people love and laugh about the random oracle model? What's an oracle? What do you mean factoring and discrete log don't have proofs of hardness? How does any of this cryptography stuff work, anyway? We trapped Steve Weis into answering our many questions. Transcript:  https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2023/06/29/why-do-we-think-anything-is-secure-with-steve-weis/ Links: - The Random Oracle Methodology, Revisited: https://eprint.iacr.org/1998/011.pdf - Factoring integers with CADO-NFS: https://www.ens-lyon.fr/LIP/AriC/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/JDetrey-tutorial.pdf - On One-way Functions from NP-Complete Problems: https://eprint.iacr.org/2021/513.pdf - Seny Kamara's lecture notes on provable security: https://cs.brown.edu/~seny/2950-v/2-provablesecurity.pdf - How To Simulate It – A Tutorial on the Simulation Proof Technique: https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/046.pdf - A Survey of Leakage-Resilient Cryptography: https://eprint.iacr.org/2019/302 - A Decade of Lattice Cryptography: https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/939.pdf "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Elon's Encrypted DMs with Matthew Garrett

52 min

Are Twitter’s new encrypted DMs unreadable even if you put a gun to Elon’s head? We invited Matthew Garrett on to do a deep decompiled dive into what kind of cryptography actually shipped. Transcript:  https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2023/05/29/elons-encrypted-dms-with-matthew-garrett/ Links: https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/66791.html https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/encrypted-direct-messages https://www.techdirt.com/2023/05/11/twitter-launches-not-actually-encrypted-encrypted-dms/ BrokenKDF2BytesGenerator: https://github.com/bcgit/bc-java/blob/master/prov/src/main/java/org/bouncycastle/jce/provider/BrokenKDF2BytesGenerator.java#L70 Analysis from sweis: https://twitter.com/sweis/status/1657082478727933954?s=20 https://signal.org/docs/specifications/x3dh/ https://signal.org/docs/specifications/doubleratchet/ https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007059752-Backup-and-Restore-Messages Trail of Bits has not audited nor signed a contract yet, per Platformer: https://www.platformer.news/p/why-you-cant-trust-twitters-encrypted "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

WhatsApp Key Transparency with Jasleen Malvai and Kevin Lewi

55 min

WhatsApp has announced they’re rolling out key transparency! Doing this at WhatsApp-scale (aka billions and biiillions of keys) is a significant task, so we talked to Jasleen Malvai and Kevin Lewi about how it works. Transcript:  https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2023/05/06/whatsapp-key-transparency Links:  https://engineering.fb.com/2023/04/13/security/whatsapp-key-transparency/ https://github.com/facebook/akd Parkeet: https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/081.pdf CONIKS: https://eprint.iacr.org/2014/1004.pdf SEEMless: https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/607.pdf WhatsApp Security Whitepaper: https://www.whatsapp.com/security/WhatsApp-Security-Whitepaper.pdf Keybase key transparency: https://book.keybase.io/docs/server "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Messaging Layer Security (MLS) with Raphael Robert

55 min

Messaging Layer Security (MLS) 1.0 is (basically) here! We invited Raphael Robert, coauthor of the MLS specification to explain it to us and answer our annoying questions (read: why does this exist?) Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2023/04/22/mls/ Links: - https://messaginglayersecurity.rocks/ - https://messaginglayersecurity.rocks/mls-protocol/draft-ietf-mls-protocol.html - https://messaginglayersecurity.rocks/mls-architecture/draft-ietf-mls-architecture.html - https://github.com/openmls/openmls - https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/1533.pdf - https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/1327.pdf - https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/559.pdf - https://signal.org/docs/ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_encapsulation_mechanism - https://twitter.com/beurdouche/status/1220617962182389760 - https://messaginglayersecurity.rocks/mls-protocol/draft-ietf-mls-protocol.html#mls-ciphersuites - https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ietf-mls-federation-02.html - https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/mimi/documents/ - https://competition-policy.ec.europa.eu/dma/dma-workshops/interoperability-workshop_en - Yes in the protocol document this is 1.0: https://messaginglayersecurity.rocks/mls-protocol/draft-ietf-mls-protocol.html#section-6 "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Real World: Crypto (2023)

54 min

Real World Cryptography 2023 is happening any moment now in Tokyo. Also, some phone basebands are broken. Links https://rwc.iacr.org/2023/https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2023/03/multiple-internet-to-baseband-remote-rce.html Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2023/03/24/rwc-2023/ "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Threema with Kenny Paterson, Matteo Scarlata and Kien Tuong Truong

1 hr 3 min

Another day, another ostensibly secure messenger that quails under the gaze of some intrepid cryptographers. This time, it's Threema, and the gaze belongs to Kenny Paterson, Matteo Scarlata, and Kien Tuong Truong from ETH Zurich. Get ready for some stunt cryptography, like 2 Fast 2 Furious stunts. Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2023/01/27/threema/ Links: https://breakingthe3ma.app/ https://threema.ch/press-files/2_documentation/cryptography_whitepaper.pdf https://threema.ch/en/blog/posts/ibex "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Has RSA been destroyed by a quantum computer???

41 min

There's a paper that claims one can factor a RSA-2048 modulus with the help of a 372-qubit quantum computer. Are we all gonna die? Also some musings about Bruce Schneier. Errata: Schneier's honorary PhD is from the University of Westminster, not UW. Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2023/01/06/has-rsa-been-destroyed-by-a-quantum-computer/ Links: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2212.12372.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2021/232.pdf https://github.com/lducas/SchnorrGate https://sweis.medium.com/did-schnorr-destroy-rsa-show-me-the-factors-dcb1bb980ab0 https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/01/breaking-rsa-with-a-quantum-computer.html https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6957 "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

End of Year Wrap Up

59 min

David and Deirdre gab about some stuff we didn't get to or just recently happened, like Tailscale's new Tailnet Lock, the Okta breach, what the f**k CISOs are for anyway, Rust in Android and Chrome, passkeys support, and of course, SBF. Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2023/01/04/end-of-year-wrap-up/ Links: https://tailscale.com/blog/tailnet-lock/ https://security.googleblog.com/2022/12/memory-safe-languages-in-android-13.html https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/chromium-dev/c/0z-6VJ9ZpVU "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Software Safety and Twitter with Kevin Riggle

58 min

We talk to Kevin Riggle (@kevinriggle) about complexity and safety. We also talk about the Twitter acquisition. While recording, we discovered a new failure mode where Kevin couldn't hear Thomas, but David and Deirdre could, so there's not much Thomas this episode. If you ever need to get Thomas to voluntarily stop talking, simply mute him to half the audience! https://twitter.com/kevinriggle Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2022/11/24/software-safety-and-twitter-with-kevin-riggle/ Errata It was the Mars Climate Orbiter that crashed due to a units mismatchDavid confused the Dreamliner with the 737 MaxLinks https://free-dissociation.com/blog/posts/2018/08/why-is-it-so-hard-to-build-safe-software/https://complexsystems.group/https://how.complexsystems.fail/https://noncombatant.org/2016/06/20/get-into-security-engineering/https://blog.nelhage.com/2010/03/security-doesnt-respect-abstraction/http://sunnyday.mit.edu/safer-world.pdfhttps://www.adaptivecapacitylabs.com/john-allspaw/https://www.etsy.com/codeascraft/blameless-postmortemshttps://increment.com/security/approachable-threat-modeling/https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/17/arts/music/taylor-swift-tickets-ticketmaster.htmlhttps://www.hillelwayne.com/post/are-we-really-engineers/https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/we-are-not-special/https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/what-we-can-learn/https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Denethor_IIhttps://twitter.com/sarahjeong/status/1587597972136546304 "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Matrix with Martin Albrecht and Dan Jones

1 hr 6 min

No not the movie: the secure group messaging protocol! Or rather all the bugs and vulns that a team of researchers found when trying to formalize said protocol. Martin Albrecht and Dan Jones joined us to walk us through "Practically-exploitable Cryptographic Vulnerabilities in Matrix". Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2022/11/02/Matrix-with-Martin-Albrecht-Dan-Jones/ Links:  https://nebuchadnezzar-megolm.github.io/static/paper.pdfhttps://nebuchadnezzar-megolm.github.ioSignal Private Group system: https://eprint.iacr.org/2019/1416.pdfhttps://signal.org/blog/signal-private-group-system/https://spec.matrix.org/latest/WhatsApp Security Whitepaper: https://www.whatsapp.com/security/WhatsApp-Security-Whitepaper.pdfhttps://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity21/presentation/albrecht FS, PCS etcOther clients: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-39252 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-39254 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-39264 https://dadrian.io/blog/posts/roll-your-own-crypto/https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-great-roll-your-own-crypto-debate-feat-filippo-valsorda/id1578405214?i=1000530617719 WhatsApp End-to-End Encrypted Backups: https://blog.whatsapp.com/end-to-end-encrypted-backups-on-whatsappRoll your own and Telegram: https://mtpsym.github.io/  "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

SOC2 with Sarah Harvey

1 hr 1 min

We have Sarah Harvey (@worldwise001 on Twitter) to talk about SOC2, what it means, how to get it, and if it's important or not. The discussion centers around two blog posts written by Thomas: SOC2 Starting Seven: https://latacora.micro.blog/2020/03/12/the-soc-starting.htmlSOC2 at Fly: https://fly.io/blog/soc2-the-screenshots-will-continue-until-security-improves/Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2022/10/16/SOC2-with-Sarah-Harvey/ Links: Tailscale recent post on getting SOC2’d: https://tailscale.com/blog/soc2-type2/SSO Tax: https://sso.taxDavid’s previous job: https://getnametag.comDavid's other startup: https://censys.ioThomas works at https://fly.io "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Nate Lawson II

1 hr 23 min

This episode got delayed because David got COVID. Anyway, here's Nate Lawson: The Two Towers. Steven Chu: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_ChuCFB: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_cipher_mode_of_operation#Cipher_feedback_(CFB)CCFB: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/11502760_19XXTEA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XXTEACHERI: https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~dstefan/cse227-spring20/papers/watson:cheri.pdf Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2022/09/29/nate-lawson-ii/ Errata: Pedram Amini did in fact do Pai Mei "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Nate Lawson: Part 1

1 hr 20 min

We bring on Nate Lawson of Root Labs to talk about a little bit of everything, starting with cryptography in the 1990s. Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2022/09/09/nate-lawson-part-1/ References IBM S/390: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/5389176SSLv2 Spec: https://www-archive.mozilla.org/projects/security/pki/nss/ssl/draft02.htmlXbox 360 HMAC: https://beta.ivc.no/wiki/index.php/Xbox_360_Timing_AttackGoogle Keyczar HMAC bug (reported by Nate): https://rdist.root.org/2009/05/28/timing-attack-in-google-keyczar-library/Errata HMAC actually published in 1996, not 1997"That was one of the first, I think hardware applications of DPA was, was, um, satellite TV cards." Not true, they first were able to break Mondex, a MasterCard smart card "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Hot Cryptanalytic Summer with Steven Galbraith

52 min

Are the isogenies kaput?! There's a new attack that breaks all the known parameter sets for SIDH/SIKE, so Steven Galbraith helps explain where the hell this came from, and where isogeny crypto goes from here. Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2022/08/11/hot-cryptanalytic-summer-with-steven-galbraith/ Merch: https://merch.scwpodcast.com Links: https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/975.pdfhttps://eprint.iacr.org/2022/1026.pdfhttps://ellipticnews.wordpress.com/2022/07/31/breaking-supersingular-isogeny-diffie-hellman-sidh/GPST active adaptive attack against SIDH: https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/859.pdfFailing to hash into supersingular isogeny graphs: https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/518.pdfhttps://research.nccgroup.com/2022/08/08/implementing-the-castryck-decru-sidh-key-recovery-attack-in-sagemath/Kuperberg attack via Peikert: https://eprint.iacr.org/2019/725.pdfSQISign: https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/1240.pdf(Post recording)  Breaking SIDH in polynomial time: https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/1038.pdf "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Passkeys with Adam Langley

1 hr 3 min

Adam Langley (Google) comes on the podcast to talk about the evolution of WebAuthN and Passkeys! David's audio was a little finicky in this one. Believe us, it sounded worse before we edited it. Also, we occasionally accidentally refer to U2F as UTF. That's because we just really love strings. Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2022/08/11/passkeys-with-adam-langley/ Links: GoogleIO PresentationWWDC PresentationW3C WebAuthNAdam's blog on passkeys and CABLECable / Hybrid PRCTAP spec from FIDONoise NKPSKDERP Don't forget about merch! https://merch.securitycryptographywhatever.com/ "Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

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