Security Cryptography Whatever

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)

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/NTRU
• The original lattices are hard paper https://www.scirp.org/reference/referencespapers?referenceid=3401227
• The original LWE for cryptography paper https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.03703
• Entropic LWE https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/119
• Dilithium round 3 submission: https://pq-crystals.org/dilithium/data/dilithium-specification-round3.pdf
• Recent attacks on Classic McEliece: https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/1694
• Lectures on post-quantum cryptography from Alfred Menezes (an originator of elliptic curve cryptography) https://www.youtube.com/@cryptography101-alfred
• Falcon https://csrc.nist.gov/csrc/media/Presentations/2024/falcon/images-media/prest-falcon-pqc2024.pdf
• Regev: https://cims.nyu.edu/~regev/#research
• Tightness 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)

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)

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/afl
• https://www.reddit.com/r/claude/comments/1tqtenf/anthropic_said_today_that_mythos_is_coming_to_all/
• https://github.com/google/clusterfuzz
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XZ_Utils_backdoor
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brighton_hotel_bombing
• https://curl.se/
• https://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/patches/7.8/common/025_sack.patch.sig
• https://www.wired.com/story/last-pass-vulnerability-password-safe/
• https://nostarch.com/tangledweb
• https://nostarch.com/silence.htm
• https://nostarch.com/practical-doomsday
• https://nostarch.com/secret-life-of-circuits
• https://www.youtube.com/c/3blue1brown

"Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

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 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)

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://peps.python.org/
- https://cryptography.io/en/latest/hazmat/primitives/asymmetric/ed448/
- https://go.dev/blog/fips140
- https://dadrian.io/blog/posts/roll-your-own-crypto/

"Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

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 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)

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

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"Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

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)

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)

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)

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 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)

'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)

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)

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)

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-undermine-internet-encryption)
- DDoSecrets - Sigint Enabling Project: [https://data.ddosecrets.com/Snowden%20archive/sigint-enabling-project.pdf](https://data.ddosecrets.com/Snowden%20archive/sigint-enabling-project.pdf)
- IAD: [https://www.iad.gov/](https://www.iad.gov/)
- Ars Technica - “Unauthorized code” in Juniper firewalls decrypts encrypted VPN traffic: [https://web.archive.org/web/20151222023311/http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/12/unauthorized-code-in-juniper-firewalls-decrypts-encrypted-vpn-traffic/](https://web.archive.org/web/20151222023311/http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/12/unauthorized-code-in-juniper-firewalls-decrypts-encrypted-vpn-traffic/)
- 2015 IMPORTANT JUNIPER SECURITY ANNOUNCEMENT: [https://web.archive.org/web/20151221171526/http://forums.juniper.net/t5/Security-Incident-Response/Important-Announcement-about-ScreenOS/ba-p/285554](https://web.archive.org/web/20151221171526/http://forums.juniper.net/t5/Security-Incident-Response/Important-Announcement-about-ScreenOS/ba-p/285554)
- Extended Random Values for TLS: [https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-rescorla-tls-extended-random-00](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-rescorla-tls-extended-random-00)
- The Art of Software Security Assessment: [https://www.amazon.com/Art-Software-Security-Assessment-Vulnerabilities/dp/0321444426](https://www.amazon.com/Art-Software-Security-Assessment-Vulnerabilities/dp/0321444426)

"Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

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)

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)

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)

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-standardization
• https://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_pw

More like ClownStrike, amirite?

"Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

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.pdf
• https://i.blackhat.com/USA21/Wednesday-Handouts/us-21-Hack-Different-Pwning-IOS-14-With-Generation-Z-Bug-wp.pdf
• https://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)

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)

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)

(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)

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)

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)

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)