I'm not a member of any "Crypto Cabal", and I use the term sardonically, directed at the people people who come out of the woodwork to pimp/gratify themselves and their businesses by posting bullshit about crypto, especially on HN (e.g., the "USE BCRYPT USE BCRYPT USE BCRYPT" guy who claimed that the problem with an RSA exponent of 1 was that "1 is a prime number" (?), or ironic articles of the "I JUST LEARNED ABOUT [crypto topic] SO DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT ENCRYPTION" variety).
My opinion, as someone who is not important, is that most crypto software is bad, and most software that is fun to use has bad crypto. The Silent Circle stuff looks good, as does the Whisper Systems stuff, and I personally use Pidgin + OTR, which is crap from a UI standpoint.
I totally understand the design/UI motivations behind Cryptocat, but IMO Nadim needs to stick with a protocol design and crypto primitives that work, fix any flaws and then leave it alone until he's more comfortable (perhaps he's done that already).
Comments
I'm not a member of any "Crypto Cabal", and I use the term sardonically, directed at the people people who come out of the woodwork to pimp/gratify themselves and their businesses by posting bullshit about crypto, especially on HN (e.g., the "USE BCRYPT USE BCRYPT USE BCRYPT" guy who claimed that the problem with an RSA exponent of 1 was that "1 is a prime number" (?), or ironic articles of the "I JUST LEARNED ABOUT [crypto topic] SO DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT ENCRYPTION" variety).
My opinion, as someone who is not important, is that most crypto software is bad, and most software that is fun to use has bad crypto. The Silent Circle stuff looks good, as does the Whisper Systems stuff, and I personally use Pidgin + OTR, which is crap from a UI standpoint.
I totally understand the design/UI motivations behind Cryptocat, but IMO Nadim needs to stick with a protocol design and crypto primitives that work, fix any flaws and then leave it alone until he's more comfortable (perhaps he's done that already).