Skip to content

Comment on Decoding the 90s: Cryptography in Early Software Development (2023)parent

Comments

RC4's deceptively simple specification made it enticing to implement, giving developers a false sense of confidence and security.

I never like the idea of hand implementing crypto, ever. Why would I not just use existing libraries?

RC4 was as much of a political statement as a technical spec. At the time, governments were banning cyphers for various reasons. RC4 was simple enough that you could memorize it to get around any prohibitions.

Some languages like c++ don't have popular package managers, so adding even one dependency can be very difficult. Learning an unpopular package manager and asking your team to rely on it introduces the burden of teaching everyone how to use it, if the manager even allows it

In this hostile environment, many wheels are reinvented

C programmers actually consider this a point of pride

AboutSource Built by g1lg1l

Hackerly is an independent reader for Hacker News, built on the public HN API. Not affiliated with Y Combinator.