in hits 508 Words

Posts so far

The problem with blogs is that, well, they’re weblogs. The ‘good’ posts dribble off the bottom, where they get mixed in with the bad, and nobody ever sees them again. The more crap I write, the worse this problem is.

To fight this — and to prevent myself from writing the same post over and over again — I thought it might be helpful to compile a list of a few posts that aren’t too embarassing. If you’re new here, you can treat this as a table of contents to this blog.

(Hey, there are things going on in the world! The CRYPTO list of accepted papers has finally been published! There are neat attacks on cryptographic tokens! I want to write about all of it, but I just don’t have time today. So please accept these re-runs for now, and hopefully I’ll have new content soon.)

On the mess that is our public-key infrastructure:

  1. The Internet is broken, can we please fix it? On Trustwave & MITM attacks.
  2. TACK, a proposal for dynamically ‘pinning’ certificates.
High-level intro posts:
  1. It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine. Post-quantum crypto from 30,000 feet.
  2. What is the random oracle model and why should I care? An early series, a little embarrassing.
  3. Format preserving encryption. Or: how to encrypt a credit card number with AES.
  4. What’s TLS Snap Start? and So long False Start. On two (now withdrawn) TLS extensions.
  5. The future of electronic currency. On anonymous e-cash.
  6. Offline security through CAPTCHAs. A neat old idea for preventing dictionary attacks.
  7. Poker is hard, especially for cryptographers. All about mental poker.
  8. Fully-Homomorphic Encryption. Unfortunately this is still unfinished…
How to use cryptography (in)securely:
  1. How (not) to use symmetric encryption. A few of the worst pitfalls.
  2. What’s the deal with RC4? A history of attacks on an old stream cipher.
  3. How to choose an authenticated encryption mode. Very important!
  4. Random number generation, an illustrated primer. A look under the hood.
  5. Surviving a bad RNG. What to do if your (P)RNG isn’t carrying its weight.
  6. Circular security. A wonkier, more theoretical subject.
  7. On multiple encryption. Are you safer if you encrypt twice?
Crypto attack(s) of the week:
  1. On the BEAST attack. Note: written before the details were made public.
  2. XML Encryption. Why you should authenticate your ciphertexts.
  3. Side-channel attacks on DESFire. Neat.
  4. Datagram TLS. Alfardan & Paterson show that  timing attacks are (still) practical.
  5. 2011 Redux. A quick summary of a whole year.
  6. Satellite phone encryption is terrible. Attacks on two satphone ciphers.
  7. The story of EAX(prime). And why security proofs are like Knight Rider.
  8. A tale of two patches. Analyzing two recent OpenSSL bugs.
Rants:
  1. Digital Fortress: I read it so you don’t have to. Dan Brown embarrasses cryptography.
  2. Bram Cohen corrected. In which I randomly flame Bram Cohen.
  3. Bram Cohen corrects me? Bram turns out to be a good sport.
  4. Why Antisec matters. The security industry is a joke?
When I though this blog was a book:
  1. Introduction
  2. Where things fall apart: Primitives, Protocols