1) Post needs a "2019".
2) Best comment inside was from Philip Zimmermann: "I agree. This is why I switched to El Gamal as the default algorithm for PGP version 5 in the late 1990s."
Seriously, Stop Using RSA (2019)
31–40 of 125 posts
Re: Seriously, Stop Using RSA (2019)
#32Here is a nice discussion of what happens when you don't validate your elliptic curve parameters properly: * https://research.nccgroup.com/2021/11/18/an-illustrated-guid... The highlight here is that in some cases, failure to properly validate gets an attacker the secret key material. Note all the conditional bits. Different curves have different properties and different issues. There are a bunch of different curves…
The article discusses this, the difference is that ECC parameters can be chosen before library-development time by expert cryptographers, all the developers have to do when actually developing the library is to generate random bits. The obviously complex mathematics of EC intimidate the non-experts away from trying to roll their own implementation and push them towards the most trusted expert implementation, while the false superficial simplicity of RSA seduce non-experts into greenspunning own implementations or using a greenspunned implementation without too much thought.
>RSA literally has just one parameter. The exponent.
How so? the 2 most important parameters are p and q, which have so many caveats and constraints on them that you lose track of them by the midpoint of the article, and you have to generate them privately so you can't offload this to non-affiliated cryptographers.
Re: Seriously, Stop Using RSA (2019)
#33Past comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20381779
Re: Seriously, Stop Using RSA (2019)
#34Sounds like the author would agree it's fine to use RSA, so long as you use an audited library with a well-designed API that makes it easy to do the right thing, and hard to do the wrong thing.
This makes me wonder, if we have an RSA library as good as libsodium, is ECC really a better choice than RSA?
I love libsodium and tend to choose it, but ECC seems far more mysterious to me than RSA. Curve25519 is much newer, has more parameters, and could potentially have a backdoor (like it's precursor, P-256). It also has much smaller, fixed-size keys.
RSA by comparison is elegant and simple to understand, with only one parameter. It's been in wide use since the 1970s. You can choose the key size.
Re: Seriously, Stop Using RSA (2019)
#35[deleted]
Re: Seriously, Stop Using RSA (2019)
#36'"Seriously, Stop Using RSA" for Dummies' please! e.g. for a fullstacker who spins up the latest Ubuntu LTS then generates a pair of 4,096-bit RSA keys using default openssh-server set over a high-number TCP port, what should they be doing that is different?
ed25519 can be generated as easily as RSA (ssh-keygen -t ed25519). Resulted keys are faster, shorter and possibly more secure than RSA.
Re: Seriously, Stop Using RSA (2019)
#37Here is a nice discussion of what happens when you don't validate your elliptic curve parameters properly: * https://research.nccgroup.com/2021/11/18/an-illustrated-guid... The highlight here is that in some cases, failure to properly validate gets an attacker the secret key material. Note all the conditional bits. Different curves have different properties and different issues. There are a bunch of different curves…
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Re: Seriously, Stop Using RSA (2019)
#38“RSA is bad because developers often don’t implement it correctly, leading to vulnerabilities. Instead, use ECC, which can also be implemented incorrectly, but developers tend to do this less.” The article raises some good points, but it really explains why you shouldn’t use your own RSA or an unaudited third-party library. A good RSA implementation which has been audited by security experts and doesn’t take shortcut…
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Re: Seriously, Stop Using RSA (2019)
#391) Post needs a "2019". 2) Best comment inside was from Philip Zimmermann: "I agree. This is why I switched to El Gamal as the default algorithm for PGP version 5 in the late 1990s."
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Re: Seriously, Stop Using RSA (2019)
#40Here is a nice discussion of what happens when you don't validate your elliptic curve parameters properly: * https://research.nccgroup.com/2021/11/18/an-illustrated-guid... The highlight here is that in some cases, failure to properly validate gets an attacker the secret key material. Note all the conditional bits. Different curves have different properties and different issues. There are a bunch of different curves…
The article discusses this, the difference is that ECC parameters can be chosen before library-development time by expert cryptographers, all the developers have to do when actually developing the library is to generate random bits. The obviously complex mathematics of EC intimidate the non-experts away from trying to roll their own implementation and push them towards the most trusted expert implementation, while th…
>The obviously complex mathematics of EC intimidate the non-experts away from trying to roll their own implementation and push them towards the most trusted expert implementation...
My experience is that programmers are not so easily intimidated. If anything, complexity is an attractant...