Top all-time · #73
A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering
Personal blog · blog.cryptographyengineering.comsecurityscience
A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering is a personal blog at blog.cryptographyengineering.com about security and science. Since 2011, 420 different Hacker News readers have linked it 618 times, most often “What's the Matter with PGP?”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-11, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 11 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for Matthew Green's explainers on PGP, WPA2 nonce reuse, ZRTP, EARN IT, and encrypted messaging and backups.
- Recommended for · 11 comments
- Called great or good reads on ZRTP, WPA2 nonce reuse, PGP, EARN IT and Chrome's sign-in change.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Some random thoughts about crypto. Notes from a course I teach. Pictures of my dachshunds.
Most-linked posts?
- What's the Matter with PGP?20 people · 22 mentions · first linked 2016-09-28
- Zero Knowledge Proofs: An illustrated primer (2014)16 people · 17 mentions · first linked 2016-11-28
- Let’s talk about PAKE14 people · 16 mentions · first linked 2018-10-19
- Is Telegram really an encrypted messaging app?13 people · 15 mentions · first linked 2024-08-25
- Zerocoin: making Bitcoin anonymous10 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2013-04-11
- Can Apple read your iMessages?10 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2013-06-26
- A few thoughts about Signal’s Secure Value Recovery9 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2020-07-12
- The strange story of “Extended Random”9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2017-12-19
- iCloud: Who Holds the Key? – A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering7 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2019-12-10
- How Safe Is Apple’s Safe Browsing?7 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2019-10-13
What Hacker News says?
End-to-end backup encryption is hard. Apple had faced criticism from cryptographers for failing to implement it. https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2012/04/05/icloud-w... The fact that they started working on the problem then abandoned it after the FBI complained is disappointing, especially to Apple consumers. But all it means is the status quo marches on. Headlines like this vindicate my decision to never pu…
Comment linking /2012/04/05/icloud-who-holds-key/
on “Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained”Submitted Why I’m done with Chrome as a story · 2357 points
HN discussion> The design of signal’s protocol is such that messages are authenticated but deniable: it is possible for the recipient to determine that the message was genuine Via the use of MACs, yes. I never said otherwise. What I said before still holds, as the recipient you can't prove to others that you indeed received a message by a certain someone rather than forged it yourself to incriminate them. > See also, this articl…
Comment linking /2020/11/16/ok-googl
on “WhatsApp gives users an ultimatum: Share data with Facebook or stop using app”Submitted The EARN IT act is an attack on end-to-end encryption as a story · 715 points
HN discussionIt is true that messages would be deniable if they weren’t authenticated. The design of signal’s protocol is such that messages are authenticated but deniable: it is possible for the recipient to determine that the message was genuine (the information you want to send) but it is not possible for a third party to prove that a message was authentic (the information you don’t want to leak). See also, this article about…
Comment linking /2020/11/16/ok-google-please-publish-your-dkim-secret-keys/
on “WhatsApp gives users an ultimatum: Share data with Facebook or stop using app”Submitted Is Telegram really an encrypted messaging app? as a story · 596 points
HN discussionYep. On any other site I’d assume that comment was satire. Nothing’s changed in the last decade: https://moxie.org/2015/02/24/gpg-and-me.html https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2014/08/13/whats-ma...
Comment linking /2014/08/13/whats-matter-with-pgp/
on “After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel”Submitted Ok Google: please publish your DKIM secret keys as a story · 583 points
HN discussionIt is funny to think that company that makes money by showing you ads based on information that it harvests by various mechanisms would let you browse the web without watching ads. Interesting changes to Chrome seem to have become more often. A recent one was the forced login policy. https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2018/09/23/why-im-l...
Comment linking /2018/09/23/why-im-leaving-chrome/
on “Google proposes changes to Chromium which would disable uBlock Origin”Submitted Truecrypt report as a story · 479 points
HN discussionNot to sideswipe your comment, but this piece is a really great overview and analysis of ZRTP: http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2012/11/lets-talk-ab...
Comment linking /2012/11/lets-talk-about-zrtp.html
on “Hello Chrome, it’s Firefox calling”Submitted A case against security nihilism as a story · 468 points
HN discussionThis blog post explains it a bit: https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2017/10/16/falling-...
Comment linking /2017/10/16/falling-through-the-kracks/
on “Key Reinstallation Attacks – Breaking WPA2 by Forcing Nonce Reuse”Submitted Falling through the KRACKs as a story · 462 points
HN discussionMatthew Green's blog on why it happened and how it escaped detection is a really good read. https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2017/10/16/falling-...
Comment linking /2017/10/16/falling-through-the-kracks/
on “Key Reinstallation Attacks – Breaking WPA2 by Forcing Nonce Reuse”Submitted Looking Back at the Snowden Revelations as a story · 401 points
HN discussionNot quite: The attacker watches for the initial client->AP encryption negotiation (or forces it by forcing a disassociate), records one step of that negotiation and replays it to the client. That has the side-effect of causing the client->AP traffic to re-use encryption keys. Since WPA2 encryption is a stream cipher, re-using keys opens it up to a known-traffic analysis attack, which allows a listener to decrypt the…
Comment linking /2017/10/16/falling-through-the-kracks/
on “Key Reinstallation Attacks – Breaking WPA2 by Forcing Nonce Reuse”Submitted What is Differential Privacy? as a story · 348 points
HN discussion> iMessage is end-to-end encrypted. The keys are managed by the devices themselves. There is no facility to backdoor or intercept the messages. That is only a half-truth. Apple controls the key infrastructure; they may replace your keys with arbitrary ones at the demand, coercion or compromise by any number of bad actors. The software is closed source, making it impossible to verify any actual claims made otherwise.…
Comment linking /2013/06/26/can-apple-read-your-imessages/
on “Apple has pushed a silent Mac update to remove hidden Zoom web server”Submitted How does Apple privately find offline devices? as a story · 347 points
HN discussionTo be fair what you're describing is a PAKE, which is substantially different from "merely" moving the key-derivation functionality of password hashing from the server to the client. They're categorically different things. But you're right - if you're going down the rabbit hole of client-side hashing, you might as well implement a PAKE instead. This kind of gets to the heart of what I was referring to when I said cl…
Comment linking /2018/10/19/lets-talk-about-pake/
on “Facebook Stored Hundreds of Millions of User Passwords in Plain Text for Years”Submitted Why the Tor attack matters as a story · 279 points
HN discussionSame here. It may be basic and crappy, but if you want to read an unsuccessful blog with no attempt at monetization or ads or even visitor counting, mine[1] is where you should feel right at home. But I guess the author means a platform, not loose websites without a collective 'new' feed. I remember looking for one when wanting to make a new blog and I haven't found a platform that felt right, at least back then (pr…
Comment linking /
on “If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs”Submitted The network is hostile as a story · 276 points
HN discussion> I don’t understand how they’re going to convince French judges that he’s guilty for not being able to decrypt chats that he has no keys for… That false statement is refutable trivially: Just perform the mud puddle test [1] in front of the judge (and a cryptographer explaining the implications to the judge). [1] https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2012/04/05/icloud-w...
Comment linking /2012/04/05/icloud-who-holds-key/
on “Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport”Submitted What's the matter with PGP? as a story · 271 points
HN discussionSome previous discussions started based on these posts: https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2015/10/22/a-riddle... https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/1018
Comment linking /2015/10/22/a-riddle-wrapped-in-curve/
on “Claude reveals ECDSA curve origins”Submitted A quick post on Chen's algorithm as a story · 270 points
HN discussionSaying you can't be secure at all isn't a solution. https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2021/07/20/a-case-a...
Comment linking /2021/07/20/a-case-against-security-nihilism/
on “NYT journalist hacked with Pegasus after reporting on previous hacking attempts”Submitted Let's talk about AI and end-to-end encryption as a story · 269 points
HN discussion
