Re:Open Sourcers Race to Build Better Versions of Slack
by e12e on Thursday March 17, 2016 @06:52AM
(#11303601)
Ok. But why use AES and GOST? AFAIK they're both based on feistel networks? If one were to layer two symmetric encryption schemes today I'd think one would go with something like salsa[ed:chacha] and keccak (in authenticated encryption mode) -- and it would probably still be a bad idea, adding much more complexity than security?
> Also Instead of using N code bases (one for each platform) we reduce it's amount by conversing sources from java to other languages for every platform.
It's a pretty strong claim to say that you take three different encryption primitives, implemented by other people in java, and translate them to other languages -- and can also be sure there are no timing attacks? (Or oracles, or resulting errors)?
Surely it would be easier to stick to as few lines and layers as possible if you want it to be easy(er) to audit?
(So simple there's obviously no mistakes, vs so complex there's no obvious mistakes and all that).
[ed: Oh, and here I go, proving that non-cryptographer should be careful about what they say wrt encryption, apparently AES isn't a feistel cipher? http://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/10605/why-is-aes-n... ]
> Also Instead of using N code bases (one for each platform) we reduce it's amount by conversing sources from java to other languages for every platform.
It's a pretty strong claim to say that you take three different encryption primitives, implemented by other people in java, and translate them to other languages -- and can also be sure there are no timing attacks? (Or oracles, or resulting errors)?
Surely it would be easier to stick to as few lines and layers as possible if you want it to be easy(er) to audit?
(So simple there's obviously no mistakes, vs so complex there's no obvious mistakes and all that).