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Root Causes: A PKI and Security Podcast

Tim Callan and Jason Soroko

Digital certificate industry veterans Tim Callan and Jason Soroko explore the issues surrounding digital identity, PKI, and cryptographic connections in today's dynamic and evolving computing world. Best practices in digital certificates are continually under pressure from technology trends, new laws and regulations, cryptographic advances, and the evolution of our computing architectures to be more virtual, agile, ubiquitous, and cloud-based. Jason and Tim (and the occasional guest subject matter expert) will help you stay current on developments in this essential technology platform and to understand the whys and wherefores of popular Public Key Infrastructures.

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43 episodes
a few times a week
Avg 12 min
English

Episodes 43

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#676
Yesterday · 8 min
Root Causes 676: The Quantum Choir - Simulating Grover's Algorithm, Part 2
In this second of two episodes, Jason walks guest Bruno Coulliard and me through his real-world experience building quantum simulators, including some of the lessons he learned.
#675
Wednesday · 19 min
Root Causes 675: The Quantum Choir - Simulating Grover's Algorithm, Part 1
In this first of two episodes, Jason walks guest Bruno Coulliard and me through his real-world experience building quantum simulators, including some of the lessons he learned.
#674
Monday · 19 min
Root Causes 674: Cryptographic Agility on Both Axes
Repeat guest Bruno Coulliard of Crypto4A joins us to discuss the accelerating pace of change in digital technology, which is going at a rate unprecedented in human history. How do we as people adjust to the hyperspeed of today's technology landscape? And how do we apply these ideas to cryptography?
#673
October 9 · 15 min
Root Causes 673: Harvest Now, Decrypt 83 Years Later
Researchers have used AI to decode two German Enigma messages that have remained unbroken since the second world war. We describe how this was accomplished.
#672
October 7 · 15 min
Root Causes 672: New AI-driven Attack on RSA 1024 Revealed
This year we have seen a series of AI-enabled cryptographic attacks. In this episode we discuss a new exploit to abuse signing mechanisms in HSMs.
#671
October 3 · 18 min
Root Causes 671: IETF Releases MTC Draft 6
The PLANTS working group in IETF recently released its draft 6 of the Merkle Tree Certificates standard. We go over what is new in this draft.
#670
October 1 · 22 min
Root Causes 670: Apple Announces Its MTC Root Program
Apple has announced it will support Merkle Tree Certificates for PQC and has released a draft root store policy. We share some of the surprising requirements in this draft.
#669
September 28 · 10 min
Root Causes 669: The clientAuth EKU Deprecation Is Coming
Publicly trusted client authentication certificates have a hard deadline to be deprecated in Q1 2027. Not everyone is ready for that. We discuss some of the reasons why and what to do about it.
#668
September 25 · 10 min
Root Causes 668: AI in 1000 Days - Ownership of IP
In our ongoing series on how AI will change in the next three years, we discuss unresolved questions involving ownership of AI-created or -modified content. Plus, what happens when your AI steals intellectual property without your knowledge?
#667
September 23 · 30 min
Root Causes 667: South Korea Has a Parallel PQC Program with Separate Algorithms
The NIST contest has not been the only government-led effort to discover qunatum-resistant algorithms. In this episode we describe South Korea's PQC contest, which is entirely independent of the NIST contest.
#666
September 21 · 23 min
Root Causes 666: What Is a Scientifically Relevant Quantum Computer? Part 2
In this second of two episodes, we finish our discussion of Scientifically Relevant Quantum Computers (SRQC) and their implications.
#665
September 18 · 23 min
Root Causes 665: What is Quantum Security Posture Management (QSPM)?
We define a new term, Quantum Security Posture Management (QSPM) and explain what it is and why it's important for PQC plans.
#664
September 17 · 29 min
Root Causes 664: What Is a Scientifically Relevant Quantum Computer? Part 1
Much ado has been made about quantum computers breaking traditional cryptography. But that's not the reason so much effort is going into their creation. In this first of two episodes, we discuss the expected scientific applications for quantum computing architecture and the idea of a Scientifically Relevant Quantum Computer (SRQC).
#663
September 11 · 22 min
Root Causes 663: The Trouble with Quantum Key Distribution
Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) is supposed to be this highly secure method of key exchange. But is it as secure as people say? We explore the potential weaknesses with QKD.
#662
September 9 · 5 min
Root Causes 662: HAWK Eliminated from NIST Competition, FALCON Unaffected
We follow up on the recent Mythos attack against PQC candidate HAWK. We discuss the impact of this attack on both HAWK and FALCON.
#662
September 4 · 10 min
Root Causes 661: What Will Happen with eIDAS and MTC?
TLS certificates from CA/Browser Forum CAs are not the only server certificates in the WebPKI. eIDAS QWACs are treated as server certificates by the major browsers. We see clear progress toward post quantum cryptography (PQC) for TLS by way of the Merkle Tree Certificate (MTC) architecture. But what is the path to PQC for eIDAS? We examine this question.
#661
September 2 · 3 min
Root Causes 660: What Are Delegated Credentials?
As certificate lifespans become extremely short, new methods of delivery become functionally necessary. We explain RFC 9345 and how delegated credentials play a role in CDNs to deliver very short-lived certificates.
#659
August 31 · 12 min
Root Causes 659: Should We Lengthen Certificate Lifespans?
With certificate lifespans shortening, we occasionally run into those who disagree with this trend and seek to lengthen maximum term once again. We examine regressive attitudes in PKI, why they occur, and the reasons that lessening security is generally a bad policy.
#658
August 26 · 13 min
Root Causes 658: The Trouble with X9 Certificates
X9 is a consortium certificate for interbanking applications. There is a common misunderstanding that X9 certificates are a public-trust surrogate for mTLS using WebPKI certificates. We clarify why this is not the case.
#657
August 24 · 1 min
Root Causes 657: What Is Chaos Engineering?
"Chaos engineering" describes the practice of injecting faults into a system to see what happens. This is a known strategy for deterministic systems, but with the advent of non-deterministic AI systems, chaos engineering has taken on greater importance.

Showing 1–20 of 43 episodes