crypto class design

[Victor Duchovni]

On Mon, Dec 17, 2007 at 10:38:59AM -0600, travis+ml-cryptography at subspacefield.org wrote:

> So... supposing I was going to design a crypto library for use within
> a financial organization, which mostly deals with credit card numbers
> and bank accounts, and wanted to create an API for use by developers,
> does anyone have any advice on it?
> 
> It doesn't have to be terribly complete, but it does have to be
> relatively easy to use correctly (i.e. securely).

APIs don't solve security problems, just code re-use problems. Teaching
smart people how to do threat analysis is a better bet. Untrained
developers will choose an API that solves the wrong problem.

> class crypto_api
> {
>     ...
>     // developers call these based on what they're trying to do
>     // these routines simply call crypto_logic layer
>     Buffer encrypt_credit_card(Buffer credit_card_number, key_t key);
>     Buffer encrypt_bank_account(Buffer bank_account, key_t key);
>     Buffer encrypt_other(Buffer buffer, key_t key);

And who does key management? I bet the key will be right there with
the data on the same disk, probably logged in the clear in application
logs too...

> The general idea is that crypto_api provides domain-specific APIs that
> are easy for anyone to understand, that the logic layer allows for the
> selection of different algorithms, and the glue layer is basically a
> translation layer to underlying libraries.

Encryption is almost never the problem, design is the problem, with a
good design, the crypto is already available.

> Comments?

Why yet another crypto library? Invest your energy in complete designs and
code of realistic show-case solutions to real-world problems, not APIs.

Good designs will get copied whole-sale, and morphed. If well documented,
the developers can learn by reading the sample code, and training can
be based around the approaches taken in the show-case systems.

When I hear developers demanding "security APIs" I pretend to be deaf...

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