OpenSSH Has a New Cipher — Chacha20-poly1305 — from D.J. Bernstein

First time accepted submitter ConstantineM writes "Inspired by a recent Google initiative to adopt ChaCha20 and Poly1305 for TLS, OpenSSH developer Damien Miller has added a similar protocol to ssh, chacha20-poly1305@openssh.com, which is based on D. J. Bernstein algorithms that are specifically optimised to provide the highest security at the lowest computational cost, and not require any special hardware at doing so. Some further details are in his blog, and at undeadly. The source code of the protocol is remarkably simple — less than 100 lines of code!"

Comments

knowing DJB, I don't trust it

[raymorris]

Based on my interactions with DJB, I wouldn't trust an algorithm he created. He's a smart guy, but he has one failing which tends to negate that - he thinks he's the ONLY smart person in the world. He's ten times as smart as everyone else, he thinks, and he sets out to prove it by consistently doing exactly what all the experts say you should NOT do. A well known example is that everyone says you shouldn't put executables or config files in /var, so DJB does. He's consistent about that, he ALWAYS does what experts say not to do. So I'm sure in the design of this algorithm he was careful to break as many time-tested principles of security as possible.