Whatever your cryptography needs, contact us at info@midnightcat.ie to schedule a consultation.

You Already Rely on Cryptography⌗

Cryptography is an amazingly liberatory technology, and in the last few decades it has gone from being the domain of govenments and a few academics to a foundation of all modern infrastructure. Many of the major goals that people want to achieve with cryptography have been not only solved, but the solution is free and ubiquitous. If you want to securely access information online, that is now the default way to do so, and your browser will probably warn you if there’s a reason you can’t. If you want to securely host information, you can set up your website with an ACME script, and within seconds you have an HTTPS site. If you want to securely chat with others, signal likely more than meets that need. If you want to securely distribute longer term assets, you can either use PGP/GPG or its spiritual successor: Hybrid Public Key Encryption (HPKE). These solutions work, and are secure more often than not - in the face of relentless attacks - because of decades of effort and research and advocacy.

But stray even a little into customisation, and you open up a world of potential problems.

Don’t Roll Your Own Crypto⌗

For almost all use cases, you’ll find existing code that is battle tested, using well-researched cryptographic primitives, that do exactly what you need. But even when you’re using existing code libraries, you’ll often have to solve basic problems that pop up time and time again.

The question you need to ask is not “Is this system post-quantum secure?” but rather “Does this system fail at basic key management?” Common problems:

• If you have a certificate authority, what happens when it expires?
• Is your secure document management protecting against authorised users falsifying information?
• Are you protecting against your secure communications being a vector for malware?

Zero Knowledge⌗

An exciting recent development in cryptography, a zero knowledge proof allows you to build a convincing argument that a particular property is true, without revealing anything other than specific enumerated facts about the inputs. It is typically used for off-chain computation in blockchain systems, where for each time period a hash of the current system state is published, along with a verifiable proof that the transition from prior state to current state followed some published rule set or program. When done right, this builds system accountability without compromising user privacy.

Advanced Crypto Expertise⌗

If you are building or supporting a system that has to step outside the guide rails, you will benefit from - at the very least - an independent assessment of the cryptography, to ensure that it meets the specific needs you face. Drop us an email at info@midnightcat.ie to schedule a consultation.