Root Causes: A PKI and Security Podcast

A new paper from Google Quantum AI and others documents a new technique for breaking ECC, particularly the curve protecting crypto currencies, smart contracts, and blockchain. This accelerates post quantum cryptography (PQC) timelines.

New research suggests that a cryptographically relevant quantum computer is achievable with only 10,000 qubits. This was an important contributor to Google moving its PQC target to 2029.

Google has announced that it is moving its target for full PQC support to 2029. This is a strong statement from one of the most knowledgeable PQC technology companies that the existing 2030 target is too late.

Legacy PKI implementations in the enterprise are holding back technical progress and creating security risk. We discuss reasons why, consequences, and what to do about it.

In our previous episode we defined cryptography as the new geopolitics. Now in our 600th episode we follow up to explain how all cryptographic decisions reflect the social, political, and legal viewpoints of the cryptography's designers.

In the last decade or so, nations around the world have become keenly determined to use cryptography for their own legal, economic, and military advantage. We explore this concept.

A recent CISA report declares that the nation's OT infrastructure is incapable of keeping up with the crypto agility and certificate management needs that modern security demands. We examine this finding.

Microsoft has publicly stated that it will hand over Bitlocker keys to US law enforcement agencies without requiring a subpoena or court order. These keys can be held by users rather than Microsoft, at their option. We dive into this topic.

We usually think of Certificate Lifecycle Management (CLM) as a security category. But we could equally well categorize it as an operations category that enables uptime. In this episode we make our case.

We introduce the concept of a "digital parasite," explaining why this attack philosophy appears to be on the rise.

In a recent blog post Google made five recommendations for policy makers. We walk down the list.

CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency) has released new guidance about post-quantum cryptography in critical infrastructure, including some very sobering warnings. We go into the details.

CAA records exist to restrict issuing CAs for a given domain to as few as one CA. But what happens when the CAA record outlives the CA to which it restricts issuance? Join us to find out.

Chrome's deadline for deprecation of the clientAuth EKU and mTLS in public certificates has moved out. We give you the what, when, and why.

It would be easy to believe that the amount of risk posed to the WebPKI by any individual public CA is somehow proportional to the number of active certificates that CA has. This is false, however. In this episode we address this misconception.

We recently heard the argument that it's simply too expensive to develop a cryptographically relevant quantum computer. We vehemently disagree. In this episode we explain why.

In this episode Tim explains that the transition to PQC is not just a change in cryptographic algorithms but also a fundamental shift in how we treat our cryptography. From here on out, IT systems need to be fundamentally crypto agile in a way we've never had to be before. Cryptographic Agility is the key to solve this problem.

YouTube video version of this episode https://youtu.be/-wMy3rPV1Lg

We expand on the concept of trust-now-forge-later to list a whole bevy of additional attacks that eventually will be enabled by cryptographically relevant quantum computers.

We all love a good manifesto! Jason spells out the ten principles of the Cryptographic Inventory Manifesto, and we discuss.

We look at the new European DORA and NIS2 regulations and how Certificate Lifecycle Management is a key requirement to meet these requirements. You will be surprised how explicit these requirements are.

Recorded in Ottawa Ontario.

New research indicates that the number of qubits necessary to achieve cryptographic relevance has reduced by two orders of magnitude. We cover this breaking news and its implications.

By CABF ballot all manual methods of Domain Control Validation (DCV) will be deprecated by 2028. We explain which methods are due for deprecation and when.

We go over the qualities in abstract of a use case that strongly invites the use of hybrid certificates and then run down a list of specific use cases that meet these criteria. This includes OT systems, code signing, secure boot, WiFi, enterprise S/MIME, and more.