Root Causes: A PKI and Security Podcast - podcast cover

Root Causes: A PKI and Security Podcast

Tim Callan and Jason Sorokosoundcloud.com
Digital certificate industry veterans Tim Callan and Jason Soroko explore the issues surrounding digital identity, PKI, and cryptographic connections in today's dynamic and evolving computing world. Best practices in digital certificates are continually under pressure from technology trends, new laws and regulations, cryptographic advances, and the evolution of our computing architectures to be more virtual, agile, ubiquitous, and cloud-based. Jason and Tim (and the occasional guest subject matter expert) will help you stay current on developments in this essential technology platform and to understand the whys and wherefores of popular Public Key Infrastructures.
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Episodes

Root Causes 417: Introducing pkimetal, the PKI Meta-linter

We introduce pkimetal, an open source project from Rob Stradling that allows CA to write to many popular linters with a single integration. We explain the importance and pitfalls of linters and how pkimetal improves linter implementation.

Sep 02, 20249 min

Root Causes 411: PQC Security Levels

A popular belief is that Grover's algorithm will require that we double our AES key sizes. Repeat guest Bas Westerbaan of Cloudflare explains why this myth is incorrect and talks through the concept of "security levels" in post-quantum cryptography.

Aug 09, 202420 min

Root Causes 408: Takeaways from Recent Conversations with PQC Experts

In the past three months we featured far-ranging conversations about post-quantum cryptography (PQC) with experts Bas Westerbaan of Cloudflare, Dustin Moody of NIST, and Bruno Coulliard of Crypto4A. In this episode we recap important takeaways from these conversations.

Jul 29, 202413 min

Root Causes 404: SCOTUS Ruling Will Change IT Security Regulation

The US Supreme Court has struck down the Chevron Deferment, which greatly expanded federal agencies' power to interpret and enforce statutes. This monumental ruling stands to shift power considerably from agencies to courts and will put more pressure on legislatures to determine precise laws around tech. We explore the consequences of this ruling.

Jul 16, 202416 min

Root Causes 403: NIST PQC Contest Round 4 and Onramp with Dustin Moody

We are joined again by Dustin Moody, who leads the NIST search for PQC algorithms. In this episode Dustin describes going-forward efforts, including Round 4 of the NIST contest and the Onramp. We discuss some of the candidate algorithms and the consequences of having multiple algorithms available for use.

Jul 12, 202422 min

Root Causes 400: French Court Orders DNS Poisoning

To combat piracy of sporting event transmissions, a French court has ordered major tech companies including Google and Cloudflare to poison DNS settings. In this episode we provide some detail and generally marvel at this strange decision.

Jul 02, 202411 min

Root Causes 399: Entrust Distrusted

On June 27, 2024 Google Chrome announced it was distrusting Entrust as a public CA starting November 1, 2024. We explain what to expect, go over Google's stated reasons, and share some of what lead up to this.

Jun 28, 202420 min

Root Causes 397: All Post Quantum Systems Are Terrible

In this new conversation with Bas Westerbaan of Cloudflare, we reveal that all existing PQC systems present significant problems for incorporation into our existing ecosystems. We explain the problems with existing systems and some options for what to do about it.

Jun 24, 202428 min

Root Causes 396: The Trouble with Microsoft Recall

Microsoft has proposed a feature called Recall that uses screen images to fuel AI-assisted capabilities. This has raised fears about the security decisions around this capability. We talk about why and how the proposed technology has resultingly changed.

Jun 21, 202414 min

Root Causes 395: Is Y2Q Like Y2K?

In this episode we compare the advent of cryptography relevancy of quantum computers (somestimes called Y2Q) to Y2K. We uncover similarities and differences and discuss how they govern decision making between now and Y2Q.

Jun 18, 202424 min

Root Causes 393: PQC-enabled Chrome Breaks Other Software

Chrome's recent 124 release supports PQC algorithms from NIST. This has led to the discovery of software and systems that break under these circumstances. We explain what happened, why, and what to do about it.

Jun 11, 202412 min

Root Causes 392: Chromium Issues a Quality Ultimatum

In the most recent CA/Browser Forum face-to-face meeting, the Google Chrome root program gave a presentation clearly defining its expectations for quality of incident reporting from CAs with an eye to where many CAs have been failing. We relate Chromium's statements and their significance.

Jun 07, 202421 min

Root Causes 391: 20 Percent of Web Visits Are PQC Enabled Today

Cloudflare research engineer Bas Westerbaan joins us to share his observations about post-quantum cryptography and what it does in the real world. We talk about the pragmatic needs of moving the internet for PQC and speculate about timelines for availability of PQC certificates.

Jun 04, 202422 min
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