Threat Modeling: Designing for Security

Chapter 16Threats to Cryptosystems

Cryptography is the art of communicating securely in the presence of adversaries. Cryptography, or crypto, as nearly everyone calls it (to save two syllables), figures into a good number of defenses. You can use it as part of how you address spoofing, tampering, repudiation, and information disclosure. It's important for people working in and around security to understand cryptographic tools; and perhaps more important, to understand the common mistakes made while using them, because failing to understand these mistakes can lead to overconfidence, and mistakes made by overconfident people are a major source of real-world problems.

Cryptographers have been enumerating threats for a very long time. They have done more than most other branches of security to quantify the security of their systems, and have over a long time evolved their thinking about threat models (in the sense of what attacks they worry about). And frankly, crypto can be a lot of fun. If you want to dabble in cryptography, the right place to get started is by breaking cryptosystems. (In a lab, not breaking into other people's systems in possible violation of ethics or law. Thanks! I knew you'd understand.) There are many targets, and the worst you'll do is not break anything. In contrast, if you try to get started by building cryptosystems without developing knowledge of how to break them, you'll inevitably have false confidence in what you've built. It's easy to build a cryptosystem ...