A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering

This is not so much a full post as it is an advertisement.

Quick caveats: this is a post on AI safety, written by a cryptography professor.

I’m coming down from spending a few days at Usenix Security, right here in my hometown of Baltimore.

Yesterday Anthropic published two new cryptanalysis results, both outputs of Claude Mythos, their (still) unreleased advanced model.

Yesterday Apple announced a big step towards deploying real AI in their Siri ecosystem.

Update August 11, 2026: A group of researchers from all over Europe were inspired by this post, and actually turned it into a real working attack!

This is the second in a series of posts about anonymous credentials.

This post has been on my back burner for well over a year.

It’s not every day that we see mainstream media get excited about encryption apps!

I learn about cryptographic vulnerabilities all the time, and they generally fill me with some combination of jealousy (“oh, why didn’t I think of that”) or else they impress me with the brilliance of their inventors.

Update 6/10: Based on a short conversation with an engineering lead at X, some of the devices used at X are claimed to be using HSMs.

This is a cryptography blog and I always feel the need to apologize for any post that isn’t “straight cryptography.”