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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 10/26/23 22:28, Peter Gutmann wrote:<span
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<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:SY4PR01MB6251A5304B31A496A5CC826BEEDCA@SY4PR01MB6251.ausprd01.prod.outlook.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">For those who can't read AlgorithmIdentifiers, that's 40-bit RC2, circa 1987.
Being used today, in financial EDI.
I suggested they just ignore the RSA part and brute-force the 40-bit key on
each message.
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<p>Yet another example of putting the "Backward" in backward
compatibility. >:-(</p>
<p>"It was secure forty years ago, so it must still be working" is a
normal thing to think. That's how mature security technologies
like steel locks work. But cryptography isn't a mature
technology. It's closer to being a mature technology than it was
in 1987, but we still value immediate performance more than we
value security that will last the way a steel lock lasts. So
computer capabilities continue to advance and invalidate the stuff
we worked on five or ten or twenty years ago, and continues to
blindside normal people who WILL ALWAYS think cryptography works
like a normal security product - that if it's secure then it stays
secure. <br>
</p>
<p>The "continues to work" assumption is the way normal people
think. Cryptography doesn't actually fail in a way that alerts
them to the fact that it's not working any more, unless someone
has already stolen all their money. <br>
</p>
This is the awe-inspiring responsibility of being on any standards
committee, folks. Whether you consider it a reasonable thing to
expect or not, anything you standardize will be used and expected to
be secure for the rest of your natural life and most of your
children's, because that's the way normal people think about normal
security products. If that expectation is false, you can't explain
the limitations in a way that anyone who's not a pro will ever
remember to even think about. Anything with limitations that would
need to be explained, shouldn't be standardized. <br>
<p>Bear</p>
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