Security Cryptography Whatever

The robots are at it again, and this time they’re solving, and breaking(?), math and cryptography! Things have been happening in the lattice corner including new leapfrogging complexity results in the closest vector problem (CVP), AND a possible poly-time quantum attack against the dihedral coset problem (DCP) that made everyone freak out for about a week (UPDATE: looks like it’s busted: https://eprint.iacr.org/2026/1693). ALSO, there was an important distinguisher attack against Classic McEliece, which on its face doesn’t sound like a big deal, unless you’re familiar with the track record of efficient distinguishers in the history of code-based cryptography… 😱

To help us make sense  of all this we are joined again by OG friend of the pod Chris Peikert! We had trouble with his audio but tried our best to fix it, apologies.

Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2026/08/26/ai-lattice-proofs-with-chris-peikert/

Links:
- https://openai.com/index/ten-advances-in-mathematics/
- https://cdn.openai.com/pdf/ten-proofs-oai.pdf
- https://x.com/ChrisPeikert/status/2083534770403750025
- https://bsky.app/profile/chrispeikert.bsky.social/post/3msp3boueis2z
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_satisfiability_problem
- https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/wordcel-shape-rotator-mathcel
- Chen 2024: https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/555
- https://eprint.iacr.org/2026/1630
- https://eprint.iacr.org/2026/1693
- CVP within n^(1/2-ɛ) -  : https://eprint.iacr.org/2026/1655

"Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

We invited Mark Schultz-Wu on the podcast to talk about the history of lattice cryptography. When lattices are explained in plain english, they are actually quite simple! I don't think any of us have ever seen Deirdre so happy. If you're watching the video version, there's a section that's 6.1 minutes long with no cuts and consists just of Deirdre vigorously agreeing with what Mark is saying while smiling. What a time to be alive.

Anyway, we are hosting another happy hour in Vegas between Black Hat and DEF CON! It's sponsored by Teleport! Thank you to Teleport, and dear readers, you should go check them out. Check out our socials or the podcast site to register.

Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2026/07/27/lattices-with-mark-schultz-wu/

Links:

• Mark's IETF Post https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/tls/HznE1IcCjstEjhh4M1p59qX1JlQ/
• NTRU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTRU
• The original lattices are hard paper https://www.scirp.org/reference/referencespapers?referenceid=3401227
• The original LWE for cryptography paper https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.03703
• Entropic LWE https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/119
• Dilithium round 3 submission: https://pq-crystals.org/dilithium/data/dilithium-specification-round3.pdf
• Recent attacks on Classic McEliece: https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/1694
• Lectures on post-quantum cryptography from Alfred Menezes (an originator of elliptic curve cryptography) https://www.youtube.com/@cryptography101-alfred
• Falcon https://csrc.nist.gov/csrc/media/Presentations/2024/falcon/images-media/prest-falcon-pqc2024.pdf
• Regev: https://cims.nyu.edu/~regev/#research
• Tightness in Proofs: https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/360.pdf
  
  
  
  

"Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

The dear leader has actually bleated out some not-dumb executive orders (EOs) to accelerate adoption of post-quantum crypto for the US government! This looks to be in response to a flurry of advancements in quantum computing and quantum attack algorithms a few months ago. We cram legalize into our eyeballs— plus, ECDSA.fail!

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZwQpN_F6P8

Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2026/07/02/trumps-golden-post-quantum-eos

Links:

- The EO https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/06/securing-the-nation-against-advanced-cryptographic-attacks/
- CNSA2 https://media.defense.gov/2022/Sep/07/2003071836/-1/-1/0/CSI_CNSA_2.0_FAQ_.PDF
- https://media.defense.gov/2025/May/30/2003728741/-1/-1/0/CSA_CNSA_2.0_ALGORITHMS.PDF
- https://www.ecdsa.fail/
- https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/safety-security/cryptography-migration-timeline/
- https://blog.cloudflare.com/post-quantum-roadmap/
- https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/research/neutral-atom-quantum-computers/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedRAMP
- https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/06/ushering-in-the-next-frontier-of-quantum-innovation/
- https://blog.trailofbits.com/2026/04/17/we-beat-googles-zero-knowledge-proof-of-quantum-cryptanalysis/
- https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=9861

"Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

We talk to Michał Zalewski (lcamtuf) about the vulnpocalypse and if we even need fuzzers anymore. This episode may be export controlled at a future date.

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI9CSgB4p9o

Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2026/06/14/facing-the-vulnpocalypse-with-lcamtuf

• https://github.com/google/afl
• https://www.reddit.com/r/claude/comments/1tqtenf/anthropic_said_today_that_mythos_is_coming_to_all/
• https://github.com/google/clusterfuzz
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XZ_Utils_backdoor
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brighton_hotel_bombing
• https://curl.se/
• https://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/patches/7.8/common/025_sack.patch.sig
• https://www.wired.com/story/last-pass-vulnerability-password-safe/
• https://nostarch.com/tangledweb
• https://nostarch.com/silence.htm
• https://nostarch.com/practical-doomsday
• https://nostarch.com/secret-life-of-circuits
• https://www.youtube.com/c/3blue1brown

"Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Returning champion Nicholas Carlini comes back to talk about using Claude for vulnerability research, and the current vulnpocalypse. It's all very high-brow stuff, and the gang learns some bitter lessons.

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IDbFLu9Ug8

Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2026/03/25/ai-bug-finding/

Links:

- https://red.anthropic.com/2026/zero-days/
- https://unpromptedcon.org/
- Black-hat LLMs  
- https://red.anthropic.com/2026/firefox/

"Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Standardizing cryptography involves a lot of opinions. Luckily, the gamer presidents are on it. Come on, you all know the drill.

This is the last time I do this.

"Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

The Python cryptography module, pyca/cryptography, has mostly been a sane wrapper around a pile of C, so that users get performant cryptography on the many, many platforms Python targets. Therefore its maintainers, Alex Gaynor and Paul Kehrer, have become intimately familiar with OpenSSL. Recently, they declared that after many years of trying to make it work, they announced pyca/cryptography would be moving away from OpenSSL when supporting new functionality and exploring adding other backends instead. We invited them on to tell us about what has happened to OpenSSL, even after the investments and improvements following Heartbleed. No guests on this pod represent anyone besides themselves.

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEKBHI3rodY

Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2026/02/01/python-cryptography-breaks-up-with-openssl

Links:
- https://cryptography.io/en/latest/statements/state-of-openssl/
- Py Cryptography: https://cryptography.io
- https://archive.openssl-conference.org/2025/presentations/Alex_Gaynor_Paul_Kehrer_The_Python_Cryptographic_Authoritys_OpenSSL_Experience.pdf
- https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2025/08/16/alex-gaynor/
- https://packages.gentoo.org/packages/media-libs/libsdl
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUIguklWwx0
- https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc9180/
- https://docs.openssl.org/3.3/man3/OSSL_PARAM/
- https://openssl.foundation/
- https://github.com/openssl/openssl/issues/17064
- https://www.feistyduck.com/newsletter/issue_132_openssl_performance_still_under_scrutiny
- https://github.com/topazproject/topaz
- https://github.com/actions/runner/issues/1069
- https://crystalhotsauce.com/
- https://openssl-library.org/news/vulnerabilities/#CVE-2025-15467
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
- https://boringssl.googlesource.com/boringssl/+/aa202db1d7091b88b80f0a58c630c5c1aefc817d
- https://www.ibm.com/products/open-sdk-for-rust-aix
- https://dadrian.io/blog/posts/corporate-support-xz/
- https://peps.python.org/
- https://cryptography.io/en/latest/hazmat/primitives/asymmetric/ed448/
- https://go.dev/blog/fips140
- https://dadrian.io/blog/posts/roll-your-own-crypto/

"Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

The International Association of Cryptologic Research held their regular election using secure voting software called Helios…and lost the keys to decrypt the results, leaving them with no choice but to throw out the vote and call a new election. Hilarity ensues. We welcome special guest Matt Bernhard who actually works on secure voting systems to explain which bits are homomorphically additive or not.

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euw_yqAQFI8

Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2025/12/30/iacr-helios

Links:

- NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/21/world/cryptography-group-lost-election-results.html
- IACR Memo: https://www.iacr.org/news/item/27138
- https://www.iacr.org/elections/
- https://vote.heliosvoting.org/faq
- https://github.com/Election-Tech-Initiative/electionguard
- https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/sec08/tech/full_papers/adida/adida.pdf
- https://www.iacr.org/elections/eVoting/about-helios.html
- https://www.iacr.org/elections/eVoting/
- https://crypto.ethz.ch/publications/files/CrGeSc97b.pdf
- https://electionguard.vote/
- https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/1901
- https://freeandfair.us/blog/open-free-election-technology/
- https://www.starvoting.org/
- https://mbernhard.com/

"Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

Apple announced its new suite of memory security improvements from the top of the stack all the way to the bottom, so we dug through what they did and how they did it (performantly). 

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FJwOI2PliU

Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2025/10/31/apple-mie

Links:

- https://security.apple.com/blog/memory-integrity-enforcement/
- Secure Page Table Monitor and Trusted Execution Monitor: https://support.apple.com/guide/security/operating-system-integrity-sec8b776536b/1/web/1#secd022396fb
- https://security.apple.com/blog/towards-the-next-generation-of-xnu-memory-safety/
- https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/adopting-type-aware-memory-allocation
- https://security.apple.com/blog/what-if-we-had-sockpuppet-in-ios16/
- https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.09272
- https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2023/11/first-handset-with-mte-on-market.html
- https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/adopting-type-aware-memory-allocation
- https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.09272
- https://spectreattack.com/spectre.pdf

"Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

There was a bug in an OpenPGP library which finally gave us an excuse to tear encrypted email via PGP to shreds. Our special guest William Woodruff joined us to help explain the vuln and indulge our gnashing of teeth on why email was never meant to be encrypted and how other modern tools do the job much, much better.

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoL3LfIozJo

Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2025/08/22/stop-using-encrypted-email-with-william-woodruff

Links:

- William Woodruff: https://yossarian.net/
- https://www.latacora.com/blog/2020/02/19/stop-using-encrypted/
- https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4880
- https://codeanlabs.com/blog/research/cve-2025-47934-spoofing-openpgp-js-signatures/
- https://www.mailpile.is/blog/2014-10-07_Some_Thoughts_on_GnuPG.html
- https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9580.html
- https://www.tumblr.com/accidentallyquadratic
- https://www.w3.org/TR/xmldsig-core/
- https://support.yubico.com/hc/en-us/articles/360013790259-Using-Your-YubiKey-with-OpenPGP
- https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9580.html#name-signature-packet-type-id-2
- https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9580.html#name-key-derivation-function
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S/MIME
- https://delta.chat
- https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/
- https://phakeobj.netlify.app/posts/gigacage/
- https://x.com/dakami

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"Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)