Threshold decryption.... I struggled with that one and still do. Obviously it's a point of fragility to allow one lost share to cancel the election. But true DKG with parties spread across the world is also not obviously easy to implement.

Yes, it's finite fields, in large part because implementing over elliptic curves, especially with proper hashing for NIZKs, was more complexity than I could handle. Would likely make sense to upgrade to EC at some point but also probably not a huge priority? Happy to hear counter arguments!

Yes, Helios definitely uses NIZKs to prove proper ballot form. Implemented in 2008 browser JavaScript, which was a fun challenge.

I abandoned mixnets in Helios v2+ in favor of homomorphic aggregation because of the operational complexity of mixnets. Explained in the 2009 paper: csrc.nist.gov/csrc/media/e...

Final SCW of 2025! We had Matt Bernhard on to talk about cryptographic voting systems, in the wake of the IACR election. (Everybody I voted for in the new election won! Woo!)

@scwpod.bsky.social did the impossible and converted me to a podcast gxrlie

NEW EPISODE! The IACR lost the keys to decrypt their encrypted election results. We welcome Matt Bernhard who works on secure voting systems to explain which Helios bits are homomorphically additive or not and more: securitycryptographywhatever.com/2025/12/30/i... www.youtube.com/watch?v=euw_...

NEW EPISODE! Apple did a new security thing for their latest phones with memory integrity enforcement, we did a deep a dive as we could given that we couldn't get anyone from Apple to come on our podcast 😭 podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a... open.spotify.com/episode/0DhC... youtu.be/9FJwOI2PliU

yw

I have just today discovered that podcasts can be chapterised, and that apparently @scwpod.bsky.social is painstakingly broken into chapters with often-joke names

Come for the PGP dunks, stay for the broader discussion of why encrypted email doesn’t make sense

NEW EPISODE! An OpenPGP.js bug gave us an excuse to tear encrypted email via PGP to shreds. William Woodruff joined us to explain the vuln & indulge our gnashing of teeth on why email was never meant to be encrypted: securitycryptographywhatever.com/2025/08/22/s... www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoL3...

The first part of this interview with my ex-colleague Alex is a great listen if you're a software engineer (or otherwise technical) and are interested in what we were working on as technologists at the Federal Trade Commission.

NEW EPISODE! We chat with friend of the pod and special guest Alex Gaynor, former deputy chief technologist at the FTC and all around good Security Person™. Join for nerdery about WebAuthn, stay for accidentally melting down GitHub APIs around November 2020! youtu.be/gBoGvyvsSi4

First round of invites going out tonight!

Transcript: securitycryptographywhatever.com/2025/07/29/v...

Come to SCWPodCon, sponsored by Teleport! securitycryptographywhatever.com/events/black...

New episode! Come to SCWPodCon, sponsored by Teleport! www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbnh...

New episode! Come to SCWPodCon, sponsored by Teleport! www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbnh...

pew pew pew www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtt8...

Signups are still open! Sponsored by Teleport!

We're throwing another SCWPodCon in Vegas! It's in the liminal space between BlackHat and DEF CON. Be there, or have FOMO. We'll provide the drinks, you provide the conversation. Sign up here: securitycryptographywhatever.com/events/black...

Should we throw another BlackHat party?

Wrote some words about memory safety and JITs. Basically, there are things we want out of hardware, but it's not MTE and it still involves migrating to memory safe languages dadrian.io/blog/posts/m...

Still have one more slot for a sponsor for our annual Vegas event, poke @dadrian.io if you have money.

NEW EPISODE! It seems like everyone that deploys E2EE encrypted cloud storage seems to mess it up, often in new and creative ways. Our special guests Matilda Backendal, Jonas Hofmann, & Kien Tuong Trong give us a tour & discuss how to actually build one securely: www.youtube.com/watch?v=sizL...

This one was super fun. We talked with Jonas Hofmann, Kien Tuong Trong, and Matilda Backendal about a cross-section study of "E2EE" secure storage (not messaging, storage). Backendal is working to formalize that problem (it wasn't already!) Fun bugs! securitycryptographywhatever.com/2025/05/19/e...

Our guest Nicholas Carlini and his coauthors just won Best Paper at Eurocrypt 2025: eprint.iacr.org/2024/1580.pdf

Migrating the US government to quantum-resistant cryptography is hard, luckily the gamer presidents are on it. This episode is very not safe for work, nor does it reflect the political opinions of, well, anybody. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/p... securitycryptographywhatever.com/2025/03/23/p...

I’ve been working on webauthn and passkeys on and off for > 1 year, and I can’t believe I missed this @scwpod.bsky.social with Adam Langley from Google, dating back to … 2022 🤯 If you’re interested in technical details about passkeys, it’s very good! securitycryptographywhatever.com/2022/08/11/p...

(limited time only)

Send us a voicemail. securitycryptographywhatever.com/voicemail/

Remembering 18F’s alum @konklone.com quote on the @scwpod.bsky.social podcast “If you want to see change in a large organization, you need to have someone around to pick up the phone” Having just started in a large organization at the time, that quote really stuck with me.

The SCW podcast team does it again and breaks down a newish, complex and alarming topic into palatable and informative pieces. Excellent questions from @durumcrustulum.com and @dadrian.io expertly answered by @josephhall.org and @matthewdgreen.bsky.social. Listen to it if you have time!

I was invited to an episode of Security, Cryptography, Whatever to talk about Apple encryption with Joe Hall. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a...

Wow @durumcrustulum.com really not messing around with this one: the episode we recorded with @matthewdgreen.bsky.social and @josephhall.org about Apple pulling Advanced Data Protection from the UK, right here on SCW: securitycryptographywhatever.com/2025/02/24/a...

This is really important. And fun to watch @matthewdgreen.bsky.social and @josephhall.org explain this really important issue. Co-sign – the UK needs to stop weakening digital security for the whole world.

Podcast podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a...

Is the UK trying to block all end-to-end encryption on the Internet? Or are they just becoming increasingly irrelevant? We asked @matthewdgreen.bsky.social and Joe Hall to come on @scwpod.bsky.social to talk about it. youtu.be/LAn_yOGUkR0

NEW EPISODE! Apple did something very un-Apple-y by pulling its Advanced Data Protection encryption for iCloud in the UK. We're joined by @matthewdgreen.bsky.social and @joebeone.techpolicy.social to discuss the ramifications: youtu.be/LAn_yOGUkR0 podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a...

Good news! SCWpod Con will happen again in 2025 between Black Hat and Def Con. Hottest ticket in town, and not just because it’s an outdoor venue in a desert. @scwpod.bsky.social

Talking to my ML/AI friends there has always been some thoughts in the back of my brain about using various forms of cryptanalysis against LLMs. This episode was fascinating in what that looks like in the real world. Great stuff 👍😊

This was a very good discussion on LLM security. I was worried it was going to be all like lattices and filigree and crystal jibber jabber. But nah, I really enjoyed the episode.

READING A CRYPTO PAPER LIVE ON STREAM: eprint.iacr.org/2025/118.pdf www.twitch.tv/durumcrustulum www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJrY...

We can only assume Nicholas is using this video to poison the training of another LLM.

We sat down with Nicholas Carlini and talked about his work attacking the mathematical underpinnings of LLMs, including remote oracle attacks that extract weights from closed foundation models. Crypto-type exploits that are not about cryptography: securitycryptographywhatever.com/2025/01/28/c...

NEW EPISODE! DeepSeek, o1, LLaMA, Claude - they're all functions, and functions can be attacked. Our special guest Nicholas Carlini joins us to discuss differential cryptanalysis on LLMs and more: youtu.be/vZ64xPI2Rc0 securitycryptographywhatever.com/2025/01/28/c...

NEW EPISODE! Our first episode of this year, and now due to popular demand, with proper video: Carole House from the NSC on Biden's Cybersecurity Everything Bagel Executive Order! youtu.be/Pqw0W2crQiM securitycryptographywhatever.com/2025/01/20/b...

Rodents of Unusual Size? I don't think they exist. But Samuel Jacques and John Schanck might disagree, and we got them to run through the news about Google's Willow quantum computer and some practical implications for cryptography: securitycryptographywhatever.com/2024/12/18/q...

NEW EPISODE! THE QUANTUM COMPUTERS ARE COMING…right? We got Samuel Jacques and John Schanck to answer that question plus a bunch of others about Google’s new quantum computer, Willow. securitycryptographywhatever.com/2024/12/18/q... youtu.be/6cENP6v1gpw