sdevlin

6 ms·

91.
by sdevlin 11y ago
I wouldn't say I'm "deferring" to it. It does align with what I think is the best option.
92.
by sdevlin 11y ago
If those companies wanted to subvert your TrueCrypt installation, they would have an easy time of it.
93.
by sdevlin 11y ago
I'm primarily a Mac user, and I use FileVault. If I were on Windows, I would use BitLocker. I'm not sure about Linux.
94.
by sdevlin 11y ago
I don't have any inside knowledge, but I don't think there's any cloak-and-dagger stuff here. I think he just didn't want to maintain it anymore (for whatever reason), and he wanted to warn people away from using unmaint
95.
by sdevlin 11y ago
I would just use the built-in disk encryption solutions your platform offers. This is also what the TrueCrypt developer recommends.
96.
by sdevlin 11y ago
Report coauthor here. No significant issues were found in either phase of the TrueCrypt audit. If you're using it today (or have used it in the past), I don't think you have anything to worry about. But it is an unmaintained piece
97.
by sdevlin 11y ago
Report coauthor here. The weaknesses of XTS mode are mostly limitations imposed by full-disk encryption. You should think of XTS as fine for FDE , but you also shouldn't put too many expectations on FDE. FDE is great if you leave your
98.
by sdevlin 11y ago
What makes it slow? Is it implemented in C#? I would avoid slow implementations of password hashing algorithms. You want the overall operation to be slow due to the computations you're performing, but you want the implementations of th
99.
by sdevlin 11y ago
There are some thoughts on the matter here: http://chargen.matasano.com/chargen/2015/3/26/enough-with-th... . But I would say yes, bcrypt is still best practice. Other commenters are right that bad passwo
100.
by sdevlin 11y ago
Great info - thanks!
101.
by sdevlin 11y ago
Ah, interesting - so this applies in particular to elliptic curves over binary fields. I may have missed this, but did they note how performance fared in the absence of hardware support? Also, have binary curves (this or the NIST ones or an
102.
by sdevlin 11y ago
That's the whole point, though - the algorithm is very straightforward to implement without data-dependent look-ups. So while any of those could affect execution time, none should do so in a way that leaks data.
103.
by sdevlin 11y ago
> They also added the PCLMULQDQ instruction to efficiently implement ECC. Isn't this more typically used in GHASH implementations? Maybe it's applicable to both.
104.
by sdevlin 11y ago
Are you talking about this paper? https://gmplib.org/~tege/x86-timing.pdf I only saw evidence of data-dependent timing with respect to the div operation, but maybe I missed something. Of course, I am not suggesting oth
105.
by sdevlin 11y ago
RSA is not "modern". Modern elliptic curves are chosen with side channels in mind. You won't find data-dependent branches or look-ups in straightforward implementations of Curve25519 scalar multiplication, for example.
106.
by sdevlin 12y ago
Yep. I remember seeing this version though: http://eprint.iacr.org/2013/346.pdf . Not sure if there is any difference in content.
107.
by sdevlin 12y ago
I haven't. I think they are pointless at best. This particular phone screen was probably the most nervous I've been during any interview ever. Predictably, it was enough to disqualify me.
108.
by sdevlin 12y ago
I once had a phone interview wherein I was required to write some code and then read it to the interviewer (character by character!) over the phone. I asked him whether it would make more sense for us to use etherpad (this was maybe five ye
109.
by sdevlin 12y ago
Maybe he meant Nadia needed to "handhold" the server(s)? I.e., that the factoring service is currently not very robust?
110.
by sdevlin 12y ago
Well, he is correct that Matasano was acquired by NCC Group. But as a rank-and-file Matasanoan since before the acquisition, I can't say I've noticed a huge impact on the day-to-day.
111.
by sdevlin 12y ago
I don't really buy that this is a simplification. This code isn't even guaranteed to work on correct input. A really simple fix would be just to use a character array.
112.
by sdevlin 12y ago
First: great article. One nit, though. There's a subtle error in the main function: char* input; printf("Please input a word: "); scanf("%s", input); Local variables are not automatically initialize
113.
by sdevlin 12y ago
Most of the comments so far focus on the fact that WhatsApp is a closed-source system. And just to be clear, it would absolutely be better to have source code. Source code gives you a 1000-foot view of the application and lets you spot obvi
114.
by sdevlin 12y ago
> RSA Encrytion uses padding (usually OAEP) Heh.
115.
by sdevlin 12y ago
I had to read the article a couple times. The scenario he's describing is: 1. A user submits a password (with no username) to authenticate. 2. The server looks up the password in a hash table. This involves: a. Hashing the p
116.
by sdevlin 12y ago
All of these points are orthogonal as to whether source code is required for a security audit.
117.
by sdevlin 12y ago
Source code doesn't really matter as much as you'd think. In fact, it can be deceptive in some cases. I would call source code a nice-to-have. In contrast, observing the network traffic, debugging the application, and examining th
118.
by sdevlin 12y ago
You'd also have to rebuild the tools for every new syntax, whereas paredit basically "just works" for every lisp.
119.
by sdevlin 12y ago
Yeah, it's arguably a plus.
120.
by sdevlin 12y ago
It depends on your use case. If you need something that speaks TLS, then no. NaCl is a different (simpler) protocol that does not have TLS compatibility as a goal. If you're building a new application then NaCl is probably a good choic

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