When Cryptographers Turn Lead into Gold

At its core, a cryptographer\´s job is to "transmutate" trust: just as alchemists turn lead into gold, cryptographers transmutate trust in one or more assumptions into trust in some other simpler and better-defined assumptions, the ones on which the security of complex monolithic systems rely. Because we can enforce and verify the resulting assumptions\´ validity more easily, such transmutation makes those systems more secure at a higher assurance. Unlike alchemists, though, cryptographers have successfully constructed some of the building blocks (such as public-key encryption and digital signatures) that play a make-or-break role in many of today\´s security-critical infrastructures. In this installment of Crypto Corner, we\´ll look at how cryptographers transmutate trust, identify some of the reasons why they sometimes fail, and investigate how they could do a better job