this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2023
311 points (98.4% liked)
Fediverse
17729 readers
122 users here now
A community dedicated to fediverse news and discussion.
Fediverse is a portmanteau of "federation" and "universe".
Getting started on Fediverse;
- What is the fediverse?
- Fediverse Platforms
- How to run your own community
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Because I have no knowledge or understanding of programing, can someone please eli5 how an open source program can remain encrypted and secure? Is it just a matter of good faith that jerks won't mess with it or does the encryption programming itself have protections?
From my understanding, open source encryption is actually better for privacy than closed source, since then you can have external auditors. Basically, encryption is doing a TON of math involving prime numbers, so even if you know the algorithms used, you still won't be able to figure out what the secret (or password) is without using inordinate amounts of computing power.
For more reading, check out Kerkchoff's Principle
which is one of the big things behind quantum computing. we will (will, not might) get to a point where QCs can do the math to crack RSA/other large prime-based encryption standards.
That's why you add a post-quantum (AKA symmetric) password too.
But be careful there have been a few “quantum safe” encryption algorithms proven to not break quantum safe.