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An interesting, seemingly minor, flaw (2018)

Of the talks that I attended at Blackhat in 2018, the most interesting was about how mangling a carry bit in a P- 256 calculation enabled compromise of a private key. This is a big deal.

Of the talks that I attended at Blackhat in 2018, the most interesting was about how mangling a carry bit in a P- 256 calculation enabled compromise of a private key. In commenting on the bug, several industry veterans (for example Adam Langley, who wrote the original code, but not the vulnerable part) expressed doubt about fixing older versions, saying that it was not evident that this could lead to damage other than the occasional failure. If you are building software and exposing it to the internet, you need a skill on your staff that can look for, find, and help fix these seemingly small flaws that can have out-sized impacts.

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