RSS Parrot

Cryptography Engineering Has An Intrinsic Duty of Care

https://soatok.blog/2026/02/25/cryptography-engineering-has-an-intrinsic-duty-of-care/

Published: February 25, 2026 21:57

To understand my point, I need to first explain three different cryptography attack papers / blog posts. I promise this won’t be boring. Three Little Disclosures Misuse-Prone Ciphers For All In a blog post titled Carelessness versus craftsmanship in…

Cryptographic Issues in Matrix’s Rust Library Vodozemac

https://soatok.blog/2026/02/17/cryptographic-issues-in-matrixs-rust-library-vodozemac/

Published: February 17, 2026 23:44

Two years ago, I glanced at Matrix’s Olm library and immediately found several side-channel vulnerabilities. After dragging their feet for 90 days, they ended up not bothering to fix any of it. The Matrix.org security team also failed to notify many of the…

Is End-to-End Encryption Optional For Large Groups?

https://soatok.blog/2026/02/14/is-end-to-end-encryption-optional-for-large-groups/

Published: February 14, 2026 16:54

One of the recent topics in Messaging App Discourse is whether it makes sense to prioritize End-to-End Encryption (E2EE) when searching for an alternative to Discord. Who’s Saying “No”? I’m going to quote 0xabad1dea here, because she is awesome and…

On Discord Alternatives

https://soatok.blog/2026/02/11/on-discord-alternatives/

Published: February 11, 2026 18:01

Next month, Discord is going to start requiring age verification. The backlash from gamers everywhere has been predictable and justified. I guess their company name checks out. I’ve had a few people reach out to me because of my prior vulnerability…

Software Assurance & That Warm and Fuzzy Feeling

https://soatok.blog/2026/01/15/software-assurance-that-warm-and-fuzzy-feeling/

Published: January 15, 2026 13:49

If I were to recommend you use a piece of cryptography-relevant software that I created, how would you actually know if it was any good? Trust is, first and foremost, a social problem. If I told you a furry designed a core piece of Internet infrastructure,…

Practical Collision Attack Against Long Key IDs in PGP

https://soatok.blog/2026/01/07/practical-collision-attack-against-long-key-ids-in-pgp/

Published: January 7, 2026 19:12

In response to the GPG.Fail attacks, a Hacker News user made this claim about the 64-bit “Long Key IDs” used by OpenPGP and GnuPG, while responding to an answer I gave to someone else’s question: OK, to be clear, I am specifically contending that a key…

Everything You Need to Know About Email Encryption in 2026

https://soatok.blog/2026/01/04/everything-you-need-to-know-about-email-encryption-in-2026/

Published: January 4, 2026 22:02

If you think about emails as if they’re anything but the digital equivalent of a postcard–that is to say, they provide zero confidentiality–then someone lied to you and I’m sorry you had to find out from a furry blog that sometimes talks about applied…

The Revolution Will Not Make the Hacker News Front Page

https://soatok.blog/2025/12/17/the-revolution-will-not-make-the-hacker-news-front-page/

Published: December 18, 2025 01:51

(with apologies to Gil Scott-Heron) If you get all of your important technology news from “content aggregators” like Hacker News, Lobste.rs, and most subreddits, you might be totally unaware of the important but boring infrastructure work happening largely…

Announcing Key Transparency for the Fediverse

https://soatok.blog/2025/12/15/announcing-key-transparency-fediverse/

Published: December 15, 2025 14:45

I’m pleased to announce the immediate availability of a reference implementation for the Public Key Directory server. This software implements the Key Transparency specification I’ve been working on since last year, and is an important stepping stone…

Moving Beyond the NPM elliptic Package

https://soatok.blog/2025/11/19/moving-beyond-the-npm-elliptic-package/

Published: November 19, 2025 23:49

Why replace the elliptic package? Yesterday, the Trail of Bits blog published a post about finding cryptographic bugs in the elliptic library (a Javascript package on NPM) by using the Wycheproof. This blog post was accompanied by a new chapter in their…

The Dreamseeker’s Vision of Tomorrow

https://soatok.blog/2025/10/15/the-dreamseekers-vision-of-tomorrow/

Published: October 15, 2025 12:50

Since I have your attention for the moment, I’d like you to ask yourself a question: What is it that drives you in life? Do you yearn for the feeling of safety? By seeking power, status, wealth, and fame? Is it cravings for pleasure that motivate your…

Are You Under the Influence? The Tail That Wags The Dog

https://soatok.blog/2025/09/16/are-you-under-the-influence-the-tail-that-wags-the-dog/

Published: September 17, 2025 02:47

It is tempting and forgivable to believe that we’re in control of our social media experiences. After all, we write what we want in our bio, select our avatars, and even come up with our own handles. We decide who we follow, what we post, and which…