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by lxgr12 hours ago |
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upvoteby smalltorch12 hours ago|
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The library is openssl and that comes with all these ciphers available. No other reason than because we can!

I wish AES-GCM was available...but openssl can't do it on its own without further dependencies to parse the authentication correctly.

Really this whole layer is complelty redundant actually. It's already E2EE without openssl via Tor. I like that it's encrypted before I hit the network pipe though.

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upvoteby john_strinlai9 hours ago|
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>No other reason than because we can!

great attitude for approximately everything except, perhaps, cryptography.

especially since the initial encryption is mostly redundant, i would encourage that you, at some point, consider reducing the number of ciphers.

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upvoteby inigyou11 hours ago|
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If a library doesn't do what you need, you need a different library, but this is impossible from a short bash script, so it's one of the tradeoffs of your design.
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upvoteby lxgr12 hours ago|
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> No other reason than because we can!

Then maybe your scientists should spend some time to stop and consider whether they should ;)

But seriously, I'd just limit this to one option on the selection side, even if you continue supporting more than that at the protocol level for cryptographic agility.

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upvoteby fc417fc8025 hours ago|
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I don't see the issue. "Anything that openssl actively supports" plus providing a default seems like an extremely reasonable stance to take.
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upvoteby xnyan1 hours ago|
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>reasonable stance

Within the last 12 months, I had to write a script for a buddy at work that turned off availability of freaking freaking 56 bit DES in OpenSSH, which was available because was provided by openssl. I'm certain it was still there to provide compatibility for something(s) critical out there that depends on it, and while I can't imagine why anybody would choose to use it, it's there and it's awful.

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upvoteby lxgr3 hours ago|
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“Supported by OpenSSL” is not a seal of quality in any sense.

It still supports a bunch of outdated crap including (on my system) RC4, RC2(!) and DES (yes, the 56 bit key one, not just 3DES).

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upvoteby fc417fc8022 hours ago|
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Fair point. But what I'm getting at is that if you aren't an expert on cryptography (and perhaps even if you are!) rather than imposing your personal preferences on others simply deferring to a trusted third party library can make a lot of sense.

So in addition to a sensible default I guess it would also be a good idea to tag choices that you believe to be outdated with a large warning. That way you haven't rolled your own crypto, you haven't forced your views on others, but you have done your best to enable end users to operate your tool in a sensible manner.

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upvoteby Bender10 hours ago|
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I would rather avoid cipher fixation. Give me thousands of protocol / cipher / mac / mode combinations. Fixation only benefits nations wanting to crack something.
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upvoteby 9 hours ago|
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upvoteby Bender10 hours ago|
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I think that's great. Cipher fixation is a vulnerability as the enemy knows what to attack.
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upvoteby lxgr8 hours ago|
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This understanding of cryptography is so outdated that we don't even have a color photograph of the person first refuting it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerckhoffs%27s_principle
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upvoteby Bender5 hours ago|
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Adding to that, cryptography is just mathematical obfuscation and often repeated here is that security through obscurity is not security at all. I will stick with my own principals of not fixating on a cipher. The only people that benefit are lazy spooks.

Rather than what is accepted as the strongest ciphers I prefer ciphers not optimized by CPU's and GPU's. Spooks will have to cycle through every combination of protocol + cipher + mac + mode + passphrase + whatever other obfuscation I shim inside that tunnel. Keep 'em on their toes. Even better I will also cycle through these encoding methods [1] if I am in a good mood otherwise I will rot13 their ass and then force them to use a Drogan’s Decoder Wheel.

[1] - https://github.com/qntm/base2048

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