Police CyberAlarm Uses Alarming Cryptography
We need to stop saying don’t roll your own crypto and start teaching it with good examples and good explanations.<p>The only people who will listen to “don’t roll your own crypto” are people who maybe should be learning crypto since they can approach it with the needed level of humility.<p>The people who should not be writing crypto are precisely the ones who will ignore this advice.<p>It’s also sort of elitist sounding and that puts people off and further reduces the odds that they will listen.<p>Everyone knows that someone “rolls their own” crypto or none of it would exist. How does one get into this mysterious club? As near as I can tell you… roll your own crypto… and manage not to fuck it up. So the way you get to become someone who gives this sage advice is by disobeying it.<p>(Of course there are degrees and Ph.Ds and publications but that’s the realm of real cryptographers of the sort that design ciphers. I’m talking about programmers using crypto.)