Stay secure with the latest encryption news, trends, and best practices in information security. Protect your data with cutting-edge cryptography.
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Background for this topic.
Encryption transforms readable data into ciphertext using an algorithm and a key, so someone who obtains the ciphertext cannot normally understand it without the required key. It protects confidentiality for data in transit, such as traffic between services, and at rest, such as files, databases, and backups. Encryption does not by itself prove who sent data, prevent tampering, or protect plaintext displayed on a compromised endpoint.
Its security therefore depends on implementation and key management. Attackers may target stolen, exposed, or overprivileged keys, weak algorithms or protocols, poor randomness, and systems that decrypt data unnecessarily. Use modern, authenticated encryption where appropriate; protect keys separately from encrypted data with tightly limited access, rotation and revocation procedures, and monitored use. Verify that encryption covers relevant backups and internal service links, while recognizing that lost keys can make recovery impossible and that encrypted traffic may still reveal metadata such as timing or endpoints.
Cruddy cryptography means victims whose files have been encrypted by the Ukraine-tormenting ransomware can break the chains without paying extortionists.
A group of academics from the North Carolina State University and Dokuz Eylul University have demonstrated what they say is the "first side-channel attack" on homomorphic encryption that could be exploited to leak data as the encryption process is underway
A vulnerability in a Microsoft crypto library gives attackers a way to figure out what data is being encrypted in lockpicker-like fashion.
A group of academics from Tel Aviv University have disclosed details of now-patched "severe" design flaws in Android-based Samsung smartphones that could have resulted in the extraction of secret cryptographic keys