Our latest “Crypto in the Wild” project, analysing secure email gateways. We give 29 cryptographic attacks on 4 different products, from SEPPmail, Cisco, Proton and CipherMail. Paper to appear at ACM CCS 2026.
ePrint Updates@eprint.ing.bot · 2h agoWhy Johnny Should Not Delegate Email Encryption to Gateways (Andris Suter-Dörig, Matteo Scarlata, Kenneth G. Paterson) ia.cr/2026/1911
A bit “inside academia” I know, but REF 2029 is going to be pretty catastrophic for Divinity @ Cambridge. Still, maybe a good impact case study to be written… 🤣 #JamesOrr
John Foot@footymac.bsky.social · 7d agoJames Orr is an academic. At Cambridge. He’s 47. He appears to have written one book that came out 7 years ago. Another one is listed as ‘forthcoming, 2022’? An article is listed as under review, no journal title, no date.
Does anybody know if James Orr has a 100% position at Cambridge? Because if he does, then his department is not getting much value for money - not really REFable, and seems to spend more time in Mayfair clubs than in student tutorials. #orr #reform #scandal #UKacademia
If you read one thing today, read this piece on the death of Jason Arday and what it says about contemporary Britain. Will Self nails it completely. And elegantly. And with a beautiful fury. willself1.substack.com/p/2089334077...
Jason Arday: J'Accuse the British Media
After the death of Jason Arday, Will Self asks what happens when the media machine mistakes what interests the public for the public interest.
willself1.substack.com
Signal is the gold standard for secure messengers. We broke Signal’s integrity (twice) in this paper via message injection attacks. @kientuong114.bsky.social presented this week at #USENIX and he and Noemi will present it again at #WAC (Crypto workshop) this weekend. Catch their talk if you can!
Kien Tuong Truong@kientuong114.bsky.social · 6mo agoJust finished presenting this work at Real World Crypto in Taipei :) TL;DR: We found 2 attacks on Signal (Android, Desktop) where a malicious server can inject messages in conversations. Super fun project! Thanks a bunch to Noemi Terzo, @kennyog.bsky.social, and @cryptojedi.bsky.social
An American interviewer asked me about my political beliefs. #VoteBinface
A thread in which @sockpuppet.org presents some of the juiciest morsels from our paper at zkae.io :
Zero Knowledge (About) Encryption
zkae.io
Thomas Ptacek@sockpuppet.org · 7mo ago"presenting a cornucopia of practical attacks". These are my favorite words ever to have occurred in a cryptography paper.
A very nice blogpost explaining our work - slices right through the marketing from the vendors: medium.com/reading-sh/y...
Your password manager’s ‘zero knowledge’ promise is broken
What ETH Zurich’s USENIX Security paper means for anyone who stores passwords in the cloud.
medium.com
Kenny Paterson@kennyog.bsky.social · 7mo agoDo you use a cloud-based password manager? So what's your threat model? Vendors like Bitwarden, Dashlane, LastPass and 1Password offer you "Zero Knowledge Encryption", with statements like: "Not even the team at Bitwarden can read your data (even if we wanted to)." We decided to test this… 1/n
Do you use a cloud-based password manager? So what's your threat model? Vendors like Bitwarden, Dashlane, LastPass and 1Password offer you "Zero Knowledge Encryption", with statements like: "Not even the team at Bitwarden can read your data (even if we wanted to)." We decided to test this… 1/n
Miracle of miracles: Deutsche Bahn runs almost on time!
Kenny Paterson@kennyog.bsky.social · 7mo agoAlmost in Karlsruhe for this talk. Looking forward to some great discussions with the KIT crypto and security community.
Almost in Karlsruhe for this talk. Looking forward to some great discussions with the KIT crypto and security community.
KIT Graduate School Cyber Security@kitcybersec.bsky.social · 7mo agoWe are back with another KASTEL Distinguished Lecture! This time Prof. Dr. Kenneth Paterson from ETH Zurich will talk about 'Cryptography in the Wild'. As always there will be time for Q&A afterwards and everybody is welcome. @kennyog.bsky.social @kitinformatik.bsky.social
"The heroes of my fields have slain one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, while the heroes of your field gathered in the desert to create a new one" is such a clear, brutal rebuttal to Manhattan Project mythology, and now the most venal idiots alive are bringing back diseases because they can.
Degree-Off
xkcd.com
The sun still rises. And it will continue to do so. Long after the fascists are gone.
Submission week for the Cryptographic Application Workshop (CAW), an affiliated event at Eurocrypt'26 in Rome! Please submit your talk proposals on constructive real-world crypto using the following instructions before Jan 23, 2026 AoE. All infos on: caw.cryptanalysis.fun.
I insisted that Nadhim Zahawi delete this tweet before joining us, because one of our rules is that everyone in Reform UK has to pretend that I’m not racist.
Achievement unlocked: I finished the Private Eye Christmas cryptic crossword (#820). It’s a right corker, thanks to Cyclops for providing the much appreciated Yuletide mental gymnastics! @privateeyenews.bsky.social
Some great talks to come at #RWC026 including 5 (!) from the Applied Cryptography research group @csateth.bsky.social on topics including Signal’s security, designing SecureDrop Next Generation, fuzzing of crypto libraries…. and one mystery topic still under embargo.
Real World Crypto Symposium@rwc.iacr.org · 9mo agoThe accepted talks for Real World Crypto 2026 are now online: rwc.iacr.org/2026/accepte... Thanks to everyone who submitted, and we look forward to the discussions at the symposium.
Do I let this guy stay in the garage or gently remove him to a nice damp bit of garden?
Would it be too salty to say how reassuring it is to find so many new experts in quantum computing and post quantum cryptography suddenly popping up over on LinkedIn?
The Call for Contributed Talks is now open for RWC 2026! And the deadline for submissions is now Oct. 10, 2025. rwc.iacr.org/2026/contrib...
RWC 2026 call for papers
Real World Crypto Symposium
rwc.iacr.org
Reading this gave me a lift - we are rapidly progressing to a carbon-free future, at least outside the US (who are being held back by extremist ideology and power of big oil lobbyists).
The New Yorker@newyorker.com · last yr.Globally, roughly a third more power is being generated from the sun this spring than last. If this exponential rate of growth can continue, we will soon live in a very different world, @billmckibben.bsky.social writes.
