you should do better than picking on them for saying "military-grade cryptography"
Have you read Schneier's "snake oil" post? It's all about "how you can pre-judge products from their advertising claims" -- Schneier's words, not mine. You see a classic snake-oil claim, and you immediately know that they're getting stuff wrong.
it's been a long time since someone found an OpenSSL flaw that would move the dials for an attacker in a basic one-way-authenticated SSL session
The great thing about SSL for an attacker is that there are lots of ways to attack it. Do certificates with NUL characters move your dials? How about a certificate which is forged by exploiting an MD5 collision?
There's a reason every business book in the universe says not to disparage competitors.
I think you've already established from our past conversations that I'm a really crappy businessman. I didn't write this post in an attempt to steal ZumoDrive's customers -- most of them wouldn't be able to get Tarsnap installed.
I wrote this post as a security guy, because ZumoDrive's smug "even Cylons won't be able to access your data" attitude annoyed me. I hope you'll agree that I know something about security and cryptography and am entitled to speak from that perspective.
Have you read anything I've said about Schneier? Sorry, I don't hang on his words quite the same way you seem to be.
You're also taking Schneier out of context. Schneier was talking about genuinely batshit products like VMA and TriStrata, products that claimed to have redefined encryption or to use 4 meg keys. He wasn't talking about people claiming that AES was military grade.
The terrible thing about OpenSSL for an attacker is that everyone has already attacked it. NUL characters broke it. CA's with MD5 broke it. Session resumption broke it. As an attacker, how I wish I had something other than OpenSSL to work with! I could break it with NUL characters! It'll rely on MD5 somewhere!
You wrote your post as a security guy. You have a conflict of interest. I think you stepped over the line. You clearly disagree. Let's agree to disagree.
He wasn't talking about people claiming that AES was military grade.
Well, no. But only because AES didn't exist yet. Saying "this is secure because it uses 256-bit AES" is just as bogus as saying "this car will be fast because it has a powerful engine" -- and the CNSS knows it, which is why NSA-approved cryptography consists of "an approved algorithm; an implementation that has been approved for the protection of classified information in a particular environment; and a supporting key management infrastructure"... not just the algorithm itself.
I'm having trouble understanding how someone who wrote "if you're typing the letters A-E-S into your code, you're doing it wrong" fails to grasp the bogosity inherent in "using AES makes this military grade". I thought you'd be cheering me on at this point.
Have you read Schneier's "snake oil" post? It's all about "how you can pre-judge products from their advertising claims" -- Schneier's words, not mine. You see a classic snake-oil claim, and you immediately know that they're getting stuff wrong.
it's been a long time since someone found an OpenSSL flaw that would move the dials for an attacker in a basic one-way-authenticated SSL session
The great thing about SSL for an attacker is that there are lots of ways to attack it. Do certificates with NUL characters move your dials? How about a certificate which is forged by exploiting an MD5 collision?
There's a reason every business book in the universe says not to disparage competitors.
I think you've already established from our past conversations that I'm a really crappy businessman. I didn't write this post in an attempt to steal ZumoDrive's customers -- most of them wouldn't be able to get Tarsnap installed.
I wrote this post as a security guy, because ZumoDrive's smug "even Cylons won't be able to access your data" attitude annoyed me. I hope you'll agree that I know something about security and cryptography and am entitled to speak from that perspective.