Reconsidering Speck

Posted Aug 8, 2018 23:55 UTC (Wed) by Depereo (guest, #104565)
Parent article: Reconsidering Speck

I'm certainly more comfortable with 'no encryption' than 'compromised encryption'.

A false sense of security can lead to storing sensitive information in an insecure place.

No encryption is exactly what it says on the box, and empowers the user to make decisions about their data.

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Reconsidering Speck

Posted Aug 9, 2018 0:32 UTC (Thu) by sfeam (subscriber, #2841) [Link]

That is a false dichotomy. The present choice you have as a consumer is between no encryption and 'encryption I don't understand well enough to judge whether or not it is secure'. Unless you are one of a rather small group of experts, that pretty much covers all options available to you, not just Speck. At best you are trusting the opinion of someone else who is more expert or you are deciding for non-technical reasons, as seems to be the major factor with Speck.

Reconsidering Speck

Posted Aug 9, 2018 7:32 UTC (Thu) by nilsmeyer (guest, #122604) [Link] (2 responses)

Does the regular user assume that encryption is safe? People have been conditioned by television and movies to think that any encryption can be cracked...

Reconsidering Speck

Posted Aug 9, 2018 9:42 UTC (Thu) by ortalo (guest, #4654) [Link] (1 responses)

Good question. Very general by the way with respect to modern cryptography or computer security. Very current too as many more users put a lot of trust in cryptography in unexpected ways (just think about crypto-currencies success....).
How can you trust something that you do not understand?
Well, personnally, I would say I can grant technical trust if I know I can understand it if given enough time and teachers. Maybe I will spare that time, but I certainly want to keep my freedom about inquiring the issue or not (or asking someone else - of my choice - to do it). That's certainly the problem with governemental agencies crypto.: they explicitly state that they do not want you to understand fully their work, or to choose yourself those who will check.
Reciprocity of trust seems confirmed again. Agencies like the NSA probably do not trust that random citizens would use such knowledge rightfully. Then, those citizens cannot trust them either. Under such auspices, the courses have to remain parallel.

But anyway, TV is right of course: any encryption can be cracked. You can alway guess the key! ;-)

Reconsidering Speck

Posted Aug 9, 2018 11:35 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> But anyway, TV is right of course: any encryption can be cracked. You can alway guess the key! ;-)

And where it can't be guessed, you can just type in OVERRIDE!