Ask Slashdot: Can Bruce Schneier Be Trusted?

An anonymous reader writes "Security guru Bruce Schneier is, among other things, a world renowned cryptography expert, author of several popular books, and a second-order internet meme. He is also an outspoken critic of the NSA, in particular the massive NSA surveillance programs disclosed over the summer by Edward Snowden. Schneier has been involved in reviewing the leaked documents and has put in effort to determine which cryptosystems should still be considered safe. I'm a big fan of Bruce Schneier, but just to play devil's advocate, let's say, hypothetically, that Schneier is actually in cahoots with the NSA. Who better to reinstate public trust in weakened cryptosystems? As an exercise in security that Schneier himself may find interesting, what methods are available for proving (or at least affirming) that we can trust Bruce Schneier?"

Comments

Trust no one

[Bodhammer]

Seriously... Especially the Govt. (and clowns - clowns scare me...)

Re:Trust no one

[khasim]

You have to trust someone, somewhere along the line.

Even the compiler can be compromised. Ken Thompson showed that.

Where I think "anonymous coward" is wrong is that he's implying the Bruce Schneier would NEED to be compromised by the NSA. He wouldn't.

There are two aspects to "crypto".
1. The math.
2. The implementation.

Bruce can validate that the math seems to be correct (or he can be compromised into saying that it seems to be correct) but it is the implementation that gets used.

So even if Bruce actually believed that the math was correct, the NSA could compromise the people/organisation/company that turned that math into a product that you would use.

And it is much easier to claim that a flawed implementation was an innocent mistake than to compromise EVERYONE who can understand the math behind it.

Re:Trust no one

[Idarubicin]

Applying the mantra of open source to the underlying mathematics: Learn the mathematics of cryptography yourself to find the bugs within the mathematics. Don't place your trust in any person other than yourself.

Which is why I always x-ray the concrete and perform a full metallurgical analysis on the structural steel before I drive across one of those government-built bridges. Sure, I had to do a four-year engineering degree, but it was worth it.

Seriously, "trust no one, and validate everything from first principles" breaks down very quickly if you try to apply it to any but the narrowest portion of your life. Figuring out workable and robust ways to evaluate trustworthiness of other parties is a damn useful (and equally damn difficult) problem.

Re:Trust no one

[swillden]

Applying the mantra of open source to the underlying mathematics: Learn the mathematics of cryptography yourself to find the bugs within the mathematics. Don't place your trust in any person other than yourself. Especially don't worship some brand-name as a god who, as diviner-intercessor, is your sole information-provider on the subject.

Care to point me to the "mathematics" of AES? How about SHA-2? For that matter, will studying the mathematics of RSA make it clear why a chosen ciphertext attack renders RSA with PKCS#1 v1.5 padding vulnerable, and how using Optimal Asymmetric Encryption Padding instead addresses the issue?

Seriously, the above is laughable advice. Oh, by all means learn crypto if you're interested, it's a fascinating subject -- one which you can easily devote your entire lifetime to, though you'll have to pick a sub-specialty if you really want deep understanding of the sort that will let you meaningfully evaluate the security of some real-world elements.

The reality is that you must rely on someone else. Even serious academic cryptography researchers make no claims to be able to fully understand anything outside their narrow area of focus, and they're also quick to point out that even when the theory is great, implementations may contain subtle defects which are extremely hard to find. The "open source" mantra is indeed exactly what we need, but your average developer -- bright though he or she may be -- simply doesn't have the background needed to contribute very effectively, and it doesn't make sense for everyone to invest the time needed to acquire that much background.

Instead, what we need is what we have: An open security research community. It could be bigger, of course, and I'd encourage anyone who has an interest in this stuff to get involved. And I'd also encourage everyone else to become more informed. But expecting to be able to make a significant contribution to improving security with just a little math is misguided.

Re:Trust no one

[PopeRatzo]

If you were the NSA, wouldn't you plant stories in places like Slashdot suggesting that you can't trust the people who are fighting to protect you from the NSA?

Which Slashdot editor is so nearsighted that they couldn't see this obvious FUD?

Easy

[TubeSteak]

and has put in effort to determine which cryptosystems should still be considered safe.

Have someone(s) double check his work.
We should be doing that anyway, even for someone who is 100% trusted.

Trust him to do what?

[Hypotensive]

If you're talking about absolute trust, i.e. "I trust him" = "I trust him to do anything", you should probably have your head examined.

Phrase your questions better and you will get more useful answers.

Here you are an answer, which you might not like

[trifish]

Problem: Paranoia
Solution: None

seriously? because SCIENCE!

[new death barbie]

Bruce Schnier may be the front-line spokesperson for the security community, but that should be completely separate from his body of work in cryptography. At the bottom line, he's doing mathematics, and mathematical proofs can be reproduced and confirmed -- or debated and disproven -- by anyone else in any country with sufficient background to understand them.

He is not some guru spouting unprovable wisdom from a mountaintop, he is a member of a scientific community, and if he is able to earn and keep the respect of that community, then that's a pretty good indication that he knows what he's talking about.

Diverse Double-Compiling (trust but verify)

[dwheeler]

Thanks for pointing out my Diverse Double-Compiling (DDC) paper!

My page on Fully Countering Trusting Trust through Diverse Double-Compiling (DDC) has more details, including detailed material so you can duplicate the experiments and re-verify the proofs. Note that you do not have to take my word for it.

You have to trust some things. But you can work to independently verify those things, to determine if they're trustworthy. I don't always agree with Bruce Schneier, but after watching what's he's done for years, I've determined that he's quite trustworthy. This is the same way we decide if we should trust anyone or any thing. In short: "trust, but verify".

Re:Can Bruce Schneier Be Trusted?

[gmanterry]

This could become a circus. If the NSA can get you to not trust Bruce, Then you couldn't trust any encryption system. If you trust none then you are just where the NSA want's you. Sometime we are going to have to pick someone we trust. Until proven otherwise, I trust Bruce.