SHA1 Broken (shattered)!

SHA1 cryptography hash has finally been broken. In all fairness it was declared obsolete a while back. But it is still very interesting to see a theoretical attack live in action.

Windows Secure Boot: Insecure by design and mostly likely can't be fixed

Encryption backdoors don’t work; the latest proof of that was discovered by security researchers Slipstream and MY123. This time, the security flub-up involves “golden keys” which can unlock Windows devices allegedly protected by Secure Boot.

Encrypting Windows Hard Drives

Bruce Schneier discusses the 'best of the worse' full-disk encryption tools available. I quote the conclusion below:

Based on what I know about BitLocker, I think it's perfectly fine for average Windows users to rely on, which is especially convenient considering it comes with many PCs. If it ever turns out that Microsoft is willing to include a backdoor in a major feature of Windows, then we have much bigger problems than the choice of disk encryption software anyway.
Whatever you choose, if trusting a proprietary operating system not to be malicious doesn't fit your threat model, maybe it's time to switch to Linux.

SSL Broken in 30 Seconds

Some new hotshot presentation at Blackhat. Introducing Breach

Update 28-Nov-14:
A paper on why and how HTTPS has collapsed.

CryptoCat

CryptoCat, which is a browser based, encrypted chat client, has been in the news for a while now. The debate is if it is really as secure as they claim it to be. The analysis are here

Finding the New Encryption Standard

04-Oct-2011:
NIST began a public contest in 2008 to find a hash function to serve as the SHA-3 standard. Here is a status update on this project. One of the algos will be chosen in 2012.


13-Apr-2012:
Another update on the shortlisted candidates