Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

"Never roll your own crypto" usually means "never devise your own crypto algorithms". Implementing an established algorithm yourself is OK provided you can prove your implementation works correctly. And... well, as Heartbleed showed, that's hard even with established crypto libraries.


Note that there are quite a few ways that crypto implementations can be insecure even if it's proven to be "correct" (in terms of inputs and outputs). For instance, it may leak information through timing, or by failing to clear sensitive memory due to a compiler optimization.


Getting the algorithm right is the easy part. It's the details of the implementation that kill you. Don't roll your own crypto.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: