Tag: cryptography

  • Backdoored standards show we desperately need more cryptographers

    Too few currently possess the skills to verify standards. Recent revelations of the NSA’s crypto-breaking capabilities have led to calls for better cryptography. But we need more cryptographers too. In the 2010 edition of their classic book Cryptography Engineering , Bruce Schneier, Niels Ferguson and Tadayoshi Kohno wrote on the SHA family of hash functions:…

  • Weak cryptography keys allow others to add valid DKIM signatures to fake emails

    512-bit key cracked within 72 hours. A Florida-based mathematician has caused a stir in the email community by adding a valid DKIM signature for google.com to an email after cracking the company’s private signing-key. When the first SMTP standard was published just over three decades ago, email spam barely existed. The email landscape has changed…