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While it is true that fundamental weaknesses in cryptographic theory may be discovered at any time, the implementation of cryptosystems is, I would assert, still very much like engineering. Broken theory is distinct from broken implementation, although broken theory does end up breaking implementations as well.

Maybe some mathematician will prove AES is broken tomorrow. In terms of the analogy, I don't care. The most qualified, fastidious engineer building the most correct implementation of AES is going to have an insecure system on their hands at the end of the day if that's true, and there is nothing we can do about that on the implementation side.

This is distinct from some programmer reading "Learn Crypto in 24 Hours", building a bad implementation of an otherwise secure cryptosystem due to inexperience or carelessness, and then screwing people over because that bad cryptosystem goes into production code.




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