David Wong

cryptologie.net

cryptography, security, and random thoughts

Hey! I'm David, cofounder of zkSecurity, research advisor at Archetype, and author of the Real-World Cryptography book. I was previously a cryptography architect of Mina at O(1) Labs, the security lead for Libra/Diem at Facebook, and a security engineer at the Cryptography Services of NCC Group. Welcome to my blog about cryptography, security, and other related topics.

← back to all posts

Kleptography: hidding a private key in plain sight

blog

from wikipedia:

A kleptographic attack is an attack which uses asymmetric encryption to implement a cryptographic backdoor. For example, one such attack could be to subtly modify how the public and private key pairs are generated by the cryptosystem so that the private key could be derived from the public key. In a well-designed attack, the outputs of the infected cryptosystem would be computationally indistinguishable from the outputs of the corresponding uninfected cryptosystem. If the infected cryptosystem is a black-box implementation such as a hardware security module, a smartcard, or a Trusted Platform Module, a successful attack could go completely unnoticed.

I’ve seen implementations of this in the wild, here on reddit (python) and here on lobsters (C#)

← back to all posts blog • 2015-01-21
currently reading:
Kleptography: hidding a private key in plain sight
01-21 blog
📖 my book
Real-World Cryptography is available from Manning Publications.
A practical guide to applied cryptography for developers and security professionals.
🎙️ my podcast
Two And A Half Coins on Spotify.
Discussing cryptocurrencies, databases, banking, and distributed systems.
📺 my youtube
Cryptography videos on YouTube.
Video explanations of cryptographic concepts and security topics.