Security Cryptography Whatever

Hosted by Deirdre Connolly, Thomas Ptacek, David Adrian

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Latest episode

Jul 2026

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About the show

Some cryptography & security people talk about security, cryptography, and whatever else is happening.

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July 27, 2026Episode 81 hr 17 min

An Odyssey of Lattice Cryptography with Mark Schultz-Wu

We invited Mark Schultz-Wu on the podcast to talk about the history of lattice cryptography. When lattices are explained in plain english, they are actually quite simple! I don't think any of us have ever seen Deirdre so happy. If you're watching the video version, there's a section that's 6.1 minutes long with no cuts and consists just of Deirdre vigorously agreeing with what Mark is saying while smiling. What a time to be alive.Anyway, we are hosting another happy hour in Vegas between Black Hat and DEF CON! It's sponsored by Teleport! Thank you to Teleport, and dear readers, you should go check them out. Check out our socials or the podcast site to register.Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2026/07/27/lattices-with-mark-schultz-wu/Links:Mark's IETF Post https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/tls/HznE1IcCjstEjhh4M1p59qX1JlQ/NTRU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTRUThe original lattices are hard paper https://www.scirp.org/reference/referencespapers?referenceid=3401227The original LWE for cryptography paper https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.03703Entropic LWE https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/119Dilithium round 3 submission: https://pq-crystals.org/dilithium/data/dilithium-specification-round3.pdfRecent attacks on Classic McEliece: https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/1694Lectures on post-quantum cryptography from Alfred Menezes (an originator of elliptic curve cryptography) https://www.youtube.com/@cryptography101-alfredFalcon https://csrc.nist.gov/csrc/media/Presentations/2024/falcon/images-media/prest-falcon-pqc2024.pdfRegev: https://cims.nyu.edu/~regev/#researchTightness in Proofs: https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/360.pdf"Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

July 2, 2026Episode 756 min

Trump's Golden Post-Quantum EO(s)

The dear leader has actually bleated out some not-dumb executive orders (EOs) to accelerate adoption of post-quantum crypto for the US government! This looks to be in response to a flurry of advancements in quantum computing and quantum attack algorithms a few months ago. We cram legalize into our eyeballs— plus, ECDSA.fail!Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZwQpN_F6P8Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2026/07/02/trumps-golden-post-quantum-eosLinks:- The EO https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/06/securing-the-nation-against-advanced-cryptographic-attacks/- CNSA2 https://media.defense.gov/2022/Sep/07/2003071836/-1/-1/0/CSI_CNSA_2.0_FAQ_.PDF- https://media.defense.gov/2025/May/30/2003728741/-1/-1/0/CSA_CNSA_2.0_ALGORITHMS.PDF- https://www.ecdsa.fail/- https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/safety-security/cryptography-migration-timeline/- https://blog.cloudflare.com/post-quantum-roadmap/- https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/research/neutral-atom-quantum-computers/- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedRAMP- https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/06/ushering-in-the-next-frontier-of-quantum-innovation/- https://blog.trailofbits.com/2026/04/17/we-beat-googles-zero-knowledge-proof-of-quantum-cryptanalysis/- https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=9861"Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

June 15, 2026Episode 61 hr 11 min

Facing the Vulnpocalypse with lcamtuf

We talk to Michał Zalewski (lcamtuf) about the vulnpocalypse and if we even need fuzzers anymore. This episode may be export controlled at a future date.Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI9CSgB4p9oTranscript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2026/06/14/facing-the-vulnpocalypse-with-lcamtufhttps://github.com/google/aflhttps://www.reddit.com/r/claude/comments/1tqtenf/anthropic_said_today_that_mythos_is_coming_to_all/https://github.com/google/clusterfuzzhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradoxhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XZ_Utils_backdoorhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brighton_hotel_bombinghttps://curl.se/https://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/patches/7.8/common/025_sack.patch.sighttps://www.wired.com/story/last-pass-vulnerability-password-safe/https://nostarch.com/tangledwebhttps://nostarch.com/silence.htmhttps://nostarch.com/practical-doomsdayhttps://nostarch.com/secret-life-of-circuitshttps://www.youtube.com/c/3blue1brown"Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

March 26, 2026Episode 51 hr 16 min

AI Finds Vulns You Can't With Nicholas Carlini

Returning champion Nicholas Carlini comes back to talk about using Claude for vulnerability research, and the current vulnpocalypse. It's all very high-brow stuff, and the gang learns some bitter lessons.Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IDbFLu9Ug8Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2026/03/25/ai-bug-finding/Links:- https://red.anthropic.com/2026/zero-days/- https://unpromptedcon.org/- Black-hat LLMs - https://red.anthropic.com/2026/firefox/"Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

March 10, 2026Episode 48 min

Standardizing Pure PQC

Standardizing cryptography involves a lot of opinions. Luckily, the gamer presidents are on it. Come on, you all know the drill.This is the last time I do this."Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

February 2, 2026Episode 31 hr 12 min

Python Cryptography Breaks Up with OpenSSL with Paul Kehrer and Alex Gaynor

The Python cryptography module, pyca/cryptography, has mostly been a sane wrapper around a pile of C, so that users get performant cryptography on the many, many platforms Python targets. Therefore its maintainers, Alex Gaynor and Paul Kehrer, have become intimately familiar with OpenSSL. Recently, they declared that after many years of trying to make it work, they announced pyca/cryptography would be moving away from OpenSSL when supporting new functionality and exploring adding other backends instead. We invited them on to tell us about what has happened to OpenSSL, even after the investments and improvements following Heartbleed. No guests on this pod represent anyone besides themselves.Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEKBHI3rodYTranscript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2026/02/01/python-cryptography-breaks-up-with-opensslLinks:- https://cryptography.io/en/latest/statements/state-of-openssl/- Py Cryptography: https://cryptography.io- https://archive.openssl-conference.org/2025/presentations/Alex_Gaynor_Paul_Kehrer_The_Python_Cryptographic_Authoritys_OpenSSL_Experience.pdf- https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2025/08/16/alex-gaynor/- https://packages.gentoo.org/packages/media-libs/libsdl- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUIguklWwx0- https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc9180/- https://docs.openssl.org/3.3/man3/OSSL_PARAM/- https://openssl.foundation/- https://github.com/openssl/openssl/issues/17064- https://www.feistyduck.com/newsletter/issue_132_openssl_performance_still_under_scrutiny- https://github.com/topazproject/topaz- https://github.com/actions/runner/issues/1069- https://crystalhotsauce.com/- https://openssl-library.org/news/vulnerabilities/#CVE-2025-15467- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus- https://boringssl.googlesource.com/boringssl/+/aa202db1d7091b88b80f0a58c630c5c1aefc817d- https://www.ibm.com/products/open-sdk-for-rust-aix- https://dadrian.io/blog/posts/corporate-support-xz/- https://peps.python.org/- https://cryptography.io/en/latest/hazmat/primitives/asymmetric/ed448/- https://go.dev/blog/fips140- https://dadrian.io/blog/posts/roll-your-own-crypto/"Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

December 31, 2025Episode 256 min

The IACR Can't Decrypt with Matt Bernhard

The International Association of Cryptologic Research held their regular election using secure voting software called Helios…and lost the keys to decrypt the results, leaving them with no choice but to throw out the vote and call a new election. Hilarity ensues. We welcome special guest Matt Bernhard who actually works on secure voting systems to explain which bits are homomorphically additive or not.Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euw_yqAQFI8Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2025/12/30/iacr-heliosLinks:- NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/21/world/cryptography-group-lost-election-results.html- IACR Memo: https://www.iacr.org/news/item/27138- https://www.iacr.org/elections/- https://vote.heliosvoting.org/faq- https://github.com/Election-Tech-Initiative/electionguard- https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/sec08/tech/full_papers/adida/adida.pdf- https://www.iacr.org/elections/eVoting/about-helios.html- https://www.iacr.org/elections/eVoting/- https://crypto.ethz.ch/publications/files/CrGeSc97b.pdf- https://electionguard.vote/- https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/1901- https://freeandfair.us/blog/open-free-election-technology/- https://www.starvoting.org/- https://mbernhard.com/"Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

October 31, 2025Episode 156 min

Apple’s Memory Integrity Enforcement

Apple announced its new suite of memory security improvements from the top of the stack all the way to the bottom, so we dug through what they did and how they did it (performantly). Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FJwOI2PliUTranscript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2025/10/31/apple-mieLinks:- https://security.apple.com/blog/memory-integrity-enforcement/- Secure Page Table Monitor and Trusted Execution Monitor: https://support.apple.com/guide/security/operating-system-integrity-sec8b776536b/1/web/1#secd022396fb- https://security.apple.com/blog/towards-the-next-generation-of-xnu-memory-safety/- https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/adopting-type-aware-memory-allocation- https://security.apple.com/blog/what-if-we-had-sockpuppet-in-ios16/- https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.09272- https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2023/11/first-handset-with-mte-on-market.html- https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/adopting-type-aware-memory-allocation- https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.09272- https://spectreattack.com/spectre.pdf"Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

August 23, 2025Episode 121 hr 11 min

Stop Using Encrypted Email with William Woodruff

There was a bug in an OpenPGP library which finally gave us an excuse to tear encrypted email via PGP to shreds. Our special guest William Woodruff joined us to help explain the vuln and indulge our gnashing of teeth on why email was never meant to be encrypted and how other modern tools do the job much, much better.Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoL3LfIozJoTranscript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2025/08/22/stop-using-encrypted-email-with-william-woodruffLinks:- William Woodruff: https://yossarian.net/- https://www.latacora.com/blog/2020/02/19/stop-using-encrypted/- https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4880- https://codeanlabs.com/blog/research/cve-2025-47934-spoofing-openpgp-js-signatures/- https://www.mailpile.is/blog/2014-10-07_Some_Thoughts_on_GnuPG.html- https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9580.html- https://www.tumblr.com/accidentallyquadratic- https://www.w3.org/TR/xmldsig-core/- https://support.yubico.com/hc/en-us/articles/360013790259-Using-Your-YubiKey-with-OpenPGP- https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9580.html#name-signature-packet-type-id-2- https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9580.html#name-key-derivation-function- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S/MIME- https://delta.chat- https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/- https://phakeobj.netlify.app/posts/gigacage/- https://x.com/dakami-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----U2FsdGVkX1/OF+EynrukxZnSAXwgksTGSIkQ6s4X9Ns7JgQ2ZymeQAp8uD09MtkJce5HOKcjhUkZOMbJl3I5iOcPgSxCGG8KccNXcY6msdAD3pdlmR5cWJpn6+qGwqvoKCsj+DYwFW6tltLBXP/cdnh9z8ktRXqfwQW+uhB5Zcaw28pzmNz/rA0cb0cLGiaXuxp9A0iWhwf2gFpUSiIJyXGLJAc8eeI1LXfISXi7IkowDMp4x+iDbOlrR0d6zCkpIKpNGReokcWhUrlGVONiVUrApZS2fvxQoHgaIvwLl5FM1WdrbQIV41DB+rgtZJhENSgMkhQ0y1bBAOM25ykRjC/UUS/q0ddXz1ThGi6vRIp4/8vkqOsEXHv5M1oT9FQTUGK3zyffq0FqGBFj6kwVZ0X0JQFmtydZKhSYEPE9s4mcfvxKNQsySK7wlxMerKrff9ZxOR7rHjE3IfqtoizX8EH+MYy2lRCoCKeLbZd0G1LcVhBhRpoXfqL2IboAWqT+U8R2eyts7qiNuWQUtmCzKNmaJMS+1M+pVN5ZXAdSqK2OJVJZgO8Ie7q4HVZeAd3GHzP7owf+VerCguOYN41cxGle1QpeFi0xcYHNna1bgbodFZ8eGDOq5yCuvmQa04XyJ4vRv7xcp/v16CniL1rN6KhnzdW2gLky8depnYyhm8NvdMFETA6K6eIYm1roD+C2wwOOKRxUpTI54ov+HYDDU+HUmpFykSesHQJ75o9m0w7V2kR/+E46olFMhHo8JWnLNsGd5QlD/fyedMXHAjimXuFk/YFnwa1lh4XwSwYm+c8ZnIfrS6oEEdUSwXMCwwVT7/tMw+ab0YRsx19hBLS41oxMz+DCah+/KDMEHv0I+VxaCH8ZfaKD4tRhduSvcWknNat3Xp8/MAmO5xN1U8s1dFvrlnt+yqDz7Wn0kVDiax2dTJVgftetqOkoSVvGdMex9K0ILUUMEpHYBISIaAc7NjoG4BieSeK7wuzBXdhHutVZVKp2ty+mAd8xPlrmemsXlzBhV/kcmF4rcG4eqoWcKpZQY8ZUDufwhIcNqIZEA+wQoKbmBQCR/NradwUrCAIsAQFMVhSYmr7ffA6Ty0twSWeVMDQmxdW+6gKA3EiTAJkFXPpdkhBUzuZHC7Eeph7DF0Ks8Vu/wzOhNsd2s2wYYF6Dl3xctcOj7eMw8VS1HtExszulM57TnqTDaLGPcX6om8NORwMEtQrCbJd/fdmoNPN/cXzLPHQj3qVZ0F50iNec6zSnmBLIRX4SAYOqzN/2icvr98Caa1oX3pUlm9W2Hcz30SXJDxOf+mqH6zL4QTAMs3/K9OkaO9nmyPelwoCwVI1q/PsMpqQhGikdM5hrzg6IcEOg5zpLB6N+wqkcGyXFzI2gSQTWYOv4thrIxPY5G9yNi4dhU+2+KJCa6aoPyAlyc41Yd3ARTeahHEjtdj6PcueRPQdVm+qWCRp09bp3oic7ljzMVrPRgdbRrzFyEAIhN9Fi4QZ08/yCLEt/BPG+N8j0cZixoj54SKi07uSOWRDrzGvgSegGCCIFKjAsq9ay0sBm61XLcZqdtj57NpNzd/y/yFYvjEQLyyn8VnFARwOaM3zjrufNC+kYVkHCYzfvu+JopScZjMiuBXI9v8OTOXlj+Ai97bnftwmpQ2635vyearRHCNATFNa96Sxd1cLjV+ECUlD4hAZQPyel8groXsyjKaMxoOkaZjG/5MDQ8KPtes32kjTmneyLSzrUaAD0F4l/iltBXzDNiT6BHD7HJmERbdkoab7+DC1hxxC1VuOHOX+G/U5NUNjxAercuFOY6kgAH5HM+woGjLUsoc5LESqyPdddeg==-----END PGP MESSAGE-----"Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)

August 16, 2025Episode 111 hr 25 min

Alex Gaynor

We chat with friend of the pod and special guest Alex Gaynor, former deputy chief technologist at the FTC and all around good Security Person™. Join for nerdery about WebAuthn, stay for accidentally melting down GitHub APIs around November 2020! Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBoGvyvsSi4Transcript: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2025/08/16/alex-gaynorLinks:- https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/no-take-only-throw- https://alexgaynor.net/2025/jan/13/challenges-funding-open-source/- https://alexgaynor.net/2025/apr/08/putting-a-price-tag-on-open-source/- https://dadrian.io/blog/posts/corporate-support-xz/- https://alex.github.io/nyt-2020-election-scraper/battleground-state-changes.html- https://github.com/alex/nyt-2020-election-scraper"Security Cryptography Whatever" is hosted by Deirdre Connolly (@durumcrustulum), Thomas Ptacek (@tqbf), and David Adrian (@dadrian)