Let’s encrypt and authenticate the whole internet.

An average internet user who has to deal with cryptography: big problem. An average programmer who has to secure his protocol with cryptography: a much bigger problem. Practically, because not every programmer cares much about cryptography. Theoretically, because it is sort of a bad design if everyone implements it in their own piece of software.

Last year, fefe and erdgeist showed impressively how hard it is for a programmer to create a socket, let alone open a connection to another machine on the Internet. Today, as a programmer, you also have to encrypt your connection; you have to authenticate your data, so no one can inject anything, and depending on the situation, you have to protect it against replay attacks and perhaps you also want forward secrecy.

Now imagine you don’t have to deal with any of this at all.

Cryptographer Dan Bernstein, known for his qmail and dnssec software, his fight against software patents and his entertaining rants such as “Wietse Venema’s Slander” and “Dear Ms. Tarzian”, will be presenting a new approach to internet security: encrypting and authenticating every single bit of it. An approach not widely considered so far because it involves supposedly slow cryptography. Dan will show an approach that uses high-speed and high-security cryptography.