The state of crypto products

[ciphergoth]

Just read this story on Slashdot, so in curiosity I downloaded the paper. And I have to echo and extend comments Peter Gutmann made about the state of crypto under Linux: when you hear about a product that uses crypto, open source, Linux based or otherwise, just assume that the crypto is woefully cack-handed rubbish from someone who's read Applied Cryptography if that.

ssh v2 is mostly OK. TLS (SSL v3.1) is mostly OK. GPG is mostly OK. IPSec is mostly OK. I don't know of anything else that people in the field think well of.

Comments

[ephermata.livejournal.com]

The thing to remember with IPSec is that it came out of the IETF. The IETF has a remarkably open process, but most of the people involved are employed by companies. So there are occasionally conflicting loyalties and hidden agendas. At the same time, you have a lot of very smart people trying their best to put together something that works well enough. The resulting process is...interesting. I don't think it would be accurate to characterize it solely as either "open source" or "closed source." It's just IETF.

Someone could write a book on the IETF and security protocols. I am not that person. The closest I've seen to analyzing what goes on are some comments in the Perlman, Kaufman, and Speciner book about the genesis of IKE. Eric Rescorla also had some comments in his presentation on "The Internet is Too Secure Already," but I don't know if he's written them down in more concrete form.