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Thomas Ptacek

Deirdre Connolly

David Adrian

Some cryptography & security people talk about security, cryptography, and whatever else is happening.

Security Cryptography Whatever

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 (@davidcadrian)

Dual_EC_DRBG with Justin Schuh and Matthew Green

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 (@davidcadrian)

Quantum Willow with John Schanck and Samuel Jacques

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 (@davidcadrian)

Biden’s Cyber-Everything Bagel with Carole House

'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 (@davidcadrian)

Cryptanalyzing LLMs with Nicholas Carlini

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 (@davidcadrian)

Apple Pulls Advanced Data Protection in the UK with Matt Green and Joe Hall

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 (@davidcadrian)

Picking Quantum Resistant Algorithms

Deirdre, Thomas and David talk about NSO group, Pegasus, whether iOS a burning trash fire, the zero-day market, and whether rewriting all of iOS in Swift is a viable strategy for reducing all these vulns.

Transcript: 
https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2021/07/26/nso-group-pegasus-zero-days-i-os-message-security/

Find us at:

https://twitter.com/durumcrustulum
https://twitter.com/tqbf 
https://twitter.com/davidcadrian

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

NSO group, Pegasus, Zero-Days, i(OS|Message) security

Special guest Filippo Valsorda joins us to debate with Thomas on whether one should or should not "roll your own crypto", and how to produce better cryptography in general.

After we recorded this, David went even deeper on 'rolling your own crypto' in a blog post here: https://dadrian.io/blog/posts/roll-your-own-crypto/

Transcript: 
https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2021/07/31/the-great-roll-your-own-crypto-debate-with-filippo-valsorda/

Links:
https://peter.website/meow-hash-cryptanalysis
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2107.04940.pdf
https://ristretto.group
https://filippo.io/heartbleed

Find us at:
https://twitter.com/durumcrustulum
https://twitter.com/tqbf 
https://twitter.com/davidcadrian

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

The Great "Roll Your Own Crypto" Debate with Filippo Valsorda

🔥JWT🔥

We talk about all sorts of tokens: JWT, PASETO, Protobuf Tokens, Macaroons, and Biscuits. With the great Jonathan Rudenberg!

After we recorded this, Thomas went deep on tokens even beyond what we talked about here: https://fly.io/blog/api-tokens-a-tedious-survey/

Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2021/08/12/what-do-we-do-about-jwt-with-jonathan-rudenberg/

Find us at:
https://twitter.com/durumcrustulum
https://twitter.com/tqbf
https://twitter.com/davidcadrian
https://twitter.com/scwpod

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

What do we do about JWT? with Jonathan Rudenberg

We did not run out of things to talk about: Chrome vs. Safari vs. Firefox. Rust vs. C++. Bug bounties vs. exploit development. The Peace Corps vs. The Marine Corps.

Transcript: 
https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2021/08/21/platform-security-part-deux-with-justin-schuh/

Find us at:
https://twitter.com/scwpod
https://twitter.com/durumcrustulum
https://twitter.com/tqbf
https://twitter.com/davidcadrian

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

Platform Security Part Deux with Justin Schuh

We bring on Nate Lawson of Root Labs to talk about a little bit of everything, starting with cryptography in the 1990s.

Transcript:
https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2022/09/09/nate-lawson-part-1/

References

 • IBM S/390: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/5389176
 • SSLv2 Spec: https://www-archive.mozilla.org/projects/security/pki/nss/ssl/draft02.html
 • Xbox 360 HMAC: https://beta.ivc.no/wiki/index.php/Xbox_360_Timing_Attack
 • Google Keyczar HMAC bug (reported by Nate): https://rdist.root.org/2009/05/28/timing-attack-in-google-keyczar-library/

Errata

 • HMAC actually published in 1996, not 1997
 • "That was one of the first, I think hardware applications of DPA was, was, um, satellite TV cards." Not true, they first were able to break Mondex, a MasterCard smart card

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

Nate Lawson: Part 1

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