The Curious Engineer

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A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering

blog.cryptographyengineering.com

Some random thoughts about crypto. Notes from a course I teach. Pictures of my dachshunds.

SecurityAI / MLSociety / politics / economyEngineering blogs

’15’20’25
Posts
211 from 11 Sep 2011 to 11 Oct 2026
Posting
monthly (9 in the last year)
Kind
personal blog
Feed
https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/feed/

2026 9

  1. New website: estimating human cryptanalytic work
  2. Is sandboxing sufficient to contain rogue agents?
  3. Everything is about to “go dark”
  4. Some thoughts about Anthropic’s new cryptanalysis results
  5. The future of Siri, or: why private inference isn’t private enough
  6. Let’s talk about encrypted reasoning
  7. Anonymous credentials: an illustrated primer (Part 2)
  8. Anonymous credentials: an illustrated primer
  9. WhatsApp Encryption, a Lawsuit, and a Lot of Noise

2025 9

  1. Kerberoasting
  2. A bit more on Twitter/X’s new encrypted messaging
  3. Dear Apple: add “Disappearing Messages” to iMessage right now
  4. Three questions about Apple, encryption, and the U.K.
  5. How to prove false statements? (Part 3)
  6. U.K. asks to backdoor iCloud Backup encryption
  7. How to prove false statements? (Part 2)
  8. How to prove false statements? (Part 1)
  9. Let’s talk about AI and end-to-end encryption

2024 3

  1. Is Telegram really an encrypted messaging app?
  2. A quick post on Chen’s algorithm
  3. Attack of the week: Airdrop tracing

2023 7

  1. To Schnorr and beyond (part 2)
  2. To Schnorr and beyond (Part 1)
  3. Some rough impressions of Worldcoin
  4. On Ashton Kutcher and Secure Multi-Party Computation
  5. PRFs, PRPs and other fantastic things
  6. Book Review: Red Team Blues
  7. Remarks on “Chat Control”

2022 4

  1. Why encrypted backup is so important
  2. One-Time Programs
  3. In defense of crypto(currency)
  4. An extremely casual code review of MetaMask’s crypto

2021 3

  1. Thinking about “traceability”
  2. A case against security nihilism
  3. Why the FBI can’t get your browsing history from Apple iCloud (and other scary stories)

2020 6

  1. Ok Google: please publish your DKIM secret keys
  2. Attack of the week: Voice calls in LTE
  3. Why is Signal asking users to set a PIN, or “A few thoughts on Secure Value Recovery”
  4. Does Zoom use end-to-end encryption?
  5. EARN IT is a direct attack on end-to-end encryption
  6. What is the random oracle model and why should you care? (Part 5)

2019 5

  1. Can end-to-end encrypted systems detect child sexual abuse imagery?
  2. How safe is Apple’s Safe Browsing?
  3. Looking back at the Snowden revelations
  4. How does Apple (privately) find your offline devices?
  5. Attack of the week: searchable encryption and the ever-expanding leakage function

2018 12

  1. On Ghost Users and Messaging Backdoors
  2. Let’s talk about PAKE
  3. Why I’m done with Chrome
  4. Friday Dachshund Blogging
  5. Wonk post: chosen ciphertext security in public-key encryption (Part 2)
  6. Was the Efail disclosure horribly screwed up?
  7. A few thoughts on Ray Ozzie’s “Clear” Proposal
  8. Wonk post: chosen ciphertext security in public-key encryption (Part 1)
  9. Hash-based Signatures: An illustrated Primer
  10. A few notes on Medsec and St. Jude Medical
  11. Apple in China: who holds the keys?
  12. Attack of the Week: Group Messaging in WhatsApp and Signal

2017 9

  1. The strange story of “Extended Random”
  2. A few thoughts on CSRankings.org
  3. Attack of the week: DUHK
  4. Falling through the KRACKs
  5. Patching is hard; so what?
  6. Beyond public key encryption
  7. Secure computing for journalists
  8. The future of Ransomware
  9. Zero Knowledge Proofs: An illustrated primer, Part 2

2016 7

  1. The limitations of Android N Encryption
  2. Attack of the week: 64-bit ciphers in TLS
  3. Is Apple’s Cloud Key Vault a crypto backdoor?
  4. Statement on DMCA lawsuit
  5. What is Differential Privacy?
  6. Attack of the Week: Apple iMessage
  7. Attack of the week: DROWN

2015 14

  1. On the Juniper backdoor
  2. Why the Tor attack matters
  3. A riddle wrapped in a curve
  4. Let’s talk about iMessage (again)
  5. The network is hostile
  6. A history of backdoors
  7. Attack of the week: Logjam
  8. How do we build encryption backdoors?
  9. Truecrypt report
  10. Attack of the week: FREAK (or ‘factoring the NSA for fun and profit’)
  11. How to paint yourself into a corner (Lenovo edition)
  12. Another update on the Truecrypt audit
  13. How do we pay for privacy?
  14. Hopefully the last post I’ll ever write on Dual EC DRBG

2014 13

  1. On the new Snowden documents
  2. Zero Knowledge Proofs: An illustrated primer
  3. Attack of the Week: Unpicking PLAID
  4. Attack of the week: POODLE
  5. Why can’t Apple decrypt your iPhone?
  6. Slate piece
  7. What’s the matter with PGP?
  8. Noodling about IM protocols
  9. Attack of the Week: Triple Handshakes (3Shake)
  10. Attack of the week: OpenSSL Heartbleed
  11. How do you know if an RNG is working?
  12. Cryptographic obfuscation and ‘unhackable’ software
  13. A letter from US security researchers

2013 23

  1. A few more notes on NSA random number generators
  2. Can hackers decrypt Target’s PIN data?
  3. An update on Truecrypt
  4. How does the NSA break SSL?
  5. Let’s audit Truecrypt!
  6. RSA warns developers not to use RSA products
  7. The Many Flaws of Dual_EC_DRBG
  8. A note on the NSA, the future and fixing mistakes
  9. On the NSA
  10. Is the cryptopocalypse nigh?
  11. TweetNaCl
  12. Can Apple read your iMessages?
  13. How to ‘backdoor’ an encryption app
  14. On cellular encryption
  15. Zerocoin: making Bitcoin anonymous
  16. The Ideal Cipher Model (wonky)
  17. Attack of the week: RC4 is kind of broken in TLS
  18. Here come the encryption apps!
  19. Cryptography is a systems problem (video)
  20. Why I hate CBC-MAC
  21. Attack of the week: TLS timing oracles
  22. In defense of Provable Security
  23. Surveillance works! Let’s have more of it.

2012 48

  1. The anatomy of a bad idea
  2. Let’s talk about ZRTP
  3. Attack of the week: Cross-VM side-channel attacks
  4. The crypto dream
  5. So you want to use an alternative cipher…
  6. SHA3 is over. Long live SHA3!
  7. On the (provable) security of TLS: Part 2
  8. On the (provable) security of TLS: Part 1
  9. Hey Amazon: Banning Security Researchers Isn’t Making Us Safer
  10. Reposted: A cryptanalysis of HDCP v2.1
  11. Dear Apple: Please set iMessage free
  12. On Gauss
  13. A missing post (updated)
  14. Four theories on the cryptography of Star Trek
  15. Indifferentiability
  16. A bad couple of years for the cryptographic token industry
  17. Flame, certificates, collisions. Oh my.
  18. Posts so far
  19. Tack
  20. If wishes were horses then beggars would ride… a Pwnie!
  21. How to choose an Authenticated Encryption mode
  22. A tale of two patches
  23. The future of electronic currency
  24. An update on the TLS MITM situation
  25. Wonk post: Circular security
  26. So long False Start, we hardly knew ye
  27. It’s the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine)
  28. iCloud: Who holds the key?
  29. Poker is hard, especially for cryptographers
  30. Why Antisec matters
  31. How do Interception Proxies fail?
  32. Surviving a bad RNG
  33. A brief update
  34. The Internet is broken: could we please fix it?
  35. Random number generation: An illustrated primer
  36. RSA keys: no insight whatsoever
  37. SSL MITM Update
  38. Trustwave announces name change: henceforth will simply be ‘Wave’
  39. Satellite phone encryption is terrible. Anyone surprised?
  40. Multiple encryption
  41. Bad movie cryptography, ‘Swordfish’ edition
  42. Tor and the Great Firewall of China
  43. In memoriam: Tim Hartnell
  44. EAX’, Knight Rider, and an admission of defeat
  45. Useful cryptography resources
  46. Attack of the week: Datagram TLS
  47. A very casual introduction to Fully Homomorphic Encryption
  48. OpenSSL and NSS are FIPS 140 certified. Is the Internet safe now?

2011 39

  1. 2011 Redux
  2. What’s TLS Snap Start?
  3. A brief note on end-of-year giving
  4. A question for you
  5. What’s the deal with RC4?
  6. Programming note
  7. Paul Kocher
  8. Liveblogging WWII: December 12, 1941
  9. Is there an Enigma bubble?
  10. Matt Green smackdown watch (Are AEAD modes more vulnerable to side-channel attacks?)
  11. How (not) to use symmetric encryption
  12. Academic vs. commercial cryptographers
  13. Human error is something to be engineered around, not lamented
  14. Non-governmental crypto attacks
  15. Bram Cohen corrects me?
  16. Digital Fortress: I read it so you don’t have to
  17. Neat research ideas that went nowhere: Preventing offline dictionary attacks with CAPTCHAs
  18. An update on our contest
  19. The first rule of vulnerability acknowledgement is: there is no vulnerability acknowledgement
  20. Format Preserving Encryption, or, how to encrypt a credit card number with AES
  21. How not to redact a document: NHTSA and Toyota edition
  22. In defense of Applied Cryptography
  23. On symbol signs, the adversary, and announcing a contest
  24. What is the Random Oracle Model and why should you care? (Part 4)
  25. Attack of the week: XML Encryption
  26. What is the Random Oracle Model and why should you care? (Part 3)
  27. Oh my…
  28. DESFire
  29. What is the Random Oracle Model and why should you care? (Part 2)
  30. How standards go wrong: constructive advice edition
  31. Should I use a non-standard encryption scheme?
  32. Bram Cohen Corrected
  33. What is the Random Oracle Model and why should you care? (Part 1)
  34. Oldtimers vs. whippersnappers (code optimization edition)
  35. Where Things Fall Apart: Protocols (Part 2 of 2)
  36. Where Things Fall Apart: Protocols (Part 1 of 2)
  37. A diversion: BEAST Attack on TLS/SSL Encryption
  38. Where Things Fall Apart: Primitives
  39. Introduction