Some Examples of Snake Oil Cryptography Techniques
This is not an exhaustive list of snake oil signs. A more thorough list is given in the external articles linked in the section below.
- Secret system
- Some encryption systems will claim to rely on a secret algorithm, technique, or device; this is categorized as security through obscurity. Criticisms of this are twofold: first, a long-standing principle, Shannon's Maxim, states that "the enemy knows the system" and that secrecy does not afford the user any advantages. Secondly, secret methods are not open to public peer review and cryptanalysis and so potential mistakes and insecurities can go unnoticed for great lengths of time.
- Technobabble
- Snake oil salespeople may use "technobabble" to sell their product since cryptography is a complicated subject.
- "Unbreakable"
- Claims of a system or cryptographic method being "unbreakable" are almost always false, and are generally considered a sure sign of snake oil.
- One-time pads
- One-time pads are a popular cryptographic method to invoke in advertising, because it is well known that one-time pads, when implemented correctly, are genuinely unbreakable. The problem comes in implementing one-time pads, which is rarely done correctly. Cryptographic systems that claim to be based on one-time pads are considered suspect, particularly if they do not describe how the one-time pad is implemented, or they describe a flawed implementation.
- Unsubstantiated "bit" claims
- Cryptographic products are often accompanied with claims of using a high number of bits for encryption, apparently referring to the key length used. However key lengths are not directly comparable between symmetric and asymmetric systems. Furthermore, the details of implementation can render the system vulnerable. For example, in 2008 it was revealed that a number of hard drives sold with built-in "128-bit AES encryption" were actually using a simple and easily defeated "XOR" scheme. AES was only used to store the key, which was easy to recover without breaking AES.
Read more about this topic: Snake Oil (cryptography)
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