Podcast
Root Causes 462: Crypto War 3.0


Hosted by
Tim Callan
Chief Compliance Officer
Jason Soroko
Fellow
Original broadcast date
January 31, 2025
In this episode we walk through the evolution of the war on cryptography, from the beginning up through today, terminating in what we call Crypto War 3.0.
Podcast Transcript
Lightly edited for flow and brevity.
The wars were between nation states themselves. Alan Turing, big part of the story. In fact, we had a great story about This Podcast Is Not About Alan Turing because it really what was to emphasize the point that - - you go listen to that episode. So Crypto War 1.0, I think if you were to categorize it was, there was a scarcity of encryption. It was not in the average person's hands, and, in fact, even - -
So imagine though that we've only got a few years left Tim, where RSA and ECC are worth a damn. And we are going to enter a world, we are going to enter a world soonish, where we're going to have operational, but insecure systems. Therefore we're gonna now reenter the stage where it's inevitable. And Bruno is the one that painted the vision of there's just no way that everybody will be ready. Y2K is not a good analogy.
Now it's everybody can do mass surveillance. We're going to enter an age where, oh crap. Now we, for 20 years, 30 years, had most of our enterprise systems secure. RSAs. Right now, secure. It won’t be forever, and you will still be operating those RSA and ECC systems and wow. So in other words, multiply the current Salt Typhoon effect to now all systems.
Nothing can be trusted. Those Microsoft CA servers you guys love to hug in your server rooms, you might as well throw it out in the street. That's the reality we're going to be living with.

