Re:The Cryptographic Doom Principle
by dsacco on Sunday January 11, 2015 @09:29AM
(#8870046)
Generating random tokens is cryptography. It just happens to be done more by non-cryptographers, which doesn't necessarily mean they're better at it (hint: they aren't).
You can perform cryptanalysis on random tokens and if the RNG (or PRNG) isn't seeded properly, you get a replay attack. This is not to mention: aside from attacks, you have further crypto to do aside from the generation: how do you verify the token?
If you roll your own RNG/PRNG and token generation, it is probably just as broken as the block cipher you tried to roll yourself as well. Using standard libraries and well-audited tools brings ciphertext authentication into the same realm of usability for developers that token generation is in.
You can perform cryptanalysis on random tokens and if the RNG (or PRNG) isn't seeded properly, you get a replay attack. This is not to mention: aside from attacks, you have further crypto to do aside from the generation: how do you verify the token?
If you roll your own RNG/PRNG and token generation, it is probably just as broken as the block cipher you tried to roll yourself as well. Using standard libraries and well-audited tools brings ciphertext authentication into the same realm of usability for developers that token generation is in.