{"id":3449,"date":"2026-06-02T12:04:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T12:04:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.ibvl.in\/index.php\/2026\/06\/02\/the-intersection-of-encryption-and-ai\/"},"modified":"2026-06-02T12:04:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T12:04:17","slug":"the-intersection-of-encryption-and-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.ibvl.in\/index.php\/2026\/06\/02\/the-intersection-of-encryption-and-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"The Intersection of Encryption and AI"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

As part of their 20th Anniversary celebration, Dark Reading<\/cite><\/a> asked five cybersecurity industry leaders who wrote blogs or columns for them over the years to select their favorite piece and share their reflections on the topic today. This is my section.<\/em><\/p>\n

Renowned technologist and author Bruce Schneier contributed a column on June 20, 2010, warning about cryptography\u2019s inability to secure modern networks<\/a>, a point he says he has been trying to argue since 2000.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor a while now,\u00a0I\u2019ve\u00a0pointed out that cryptography is singularly ill-suited to solve the major network security problems of today: denial-of-service attacks, website defacement, theft of credit card numbers, identity theft, viruses and worms, DNS attacks, network penetration, and so on.<\/p>\n

\u201cRecently, I talked to a former NSA employee at a conference. He told me that back in the 1990s, he had a copy of my book Applied Cryptography<\/cite><\/a> by his desk, as did many other cryptographers working at Ft. Meade.\u00a0People were allowed to refer to it, but they were not allowed to cite it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 1990s were an important decade for cryptography. This was before the internet went\u00a0mass\u00a0market, when cryptography was just\u00a0emerging\u00a0from a niche academic discipline to a mainstream engineering one. There wasn\u2019t much that programmers could read. The NSA used my book for the same reason it became a bestseller: because it collected all the academic cryptography of the time in one place\u00a0and made it understandable to people who\u00a0weren\u2019t\u00a0mathematicians.\u00a0They feared it for\u00a0exactly the same\u00a0reason.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve\u00a0been thinking about that conversation as I revisit a\u00a02010 essay\u00a0I wrote for Dark Reading, \u2018The Failure of Cryptography to Secure Modern Networks<\/a>.\u2019 Cryptography has inherent mathematical properties that\u00a0greatly favor\u00a0the defender. Adding a single bit to the length of a key adds only a slight amount of work for the\u00a0defender but\u00a0doubles the amount of work the attacker\u00a0has to\u00a0do. Doubling the key length doubles the amount of work the defender\u00a0has to\u00a0do (if that\u2014I\u2019m\u00a0being approximate here) but\u00a0increases the attacker\u2019s workload exponentially. For many years, we have exploited that mathematical imbalance.<\/p>\n

\u201cComputer security is much more balanced.\u00a0There\u2019ll\u00a0be a new\u00a0attack, and\u00a0a new\u00a0defense, and\u00a0a new attack, and a new defense.\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0an arms race between\u00a0attacker\u00a0and\u00a0defender. And\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0a very fast\u00a0arms race. New vulnerabilities are discovered all the time. The balance can tip from defender to attacker overnight, and back again the night after. Computer security defenses\u00a0are inherently\u00a0very fragile.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u00a0isn\u2019t\u00a0a new idea.\u00a0I said much the same thing in the preface to my 2000 book, Secrets and Lies<\/cite>:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Cryptography is a branch of mathematics.\u00a0And like all mathematics, it involves numbers, equations, and logic.\u00a0Security, real security that you or I might find useful in our lives, involves people: things people know, relationships between people,\u00a0people\u00a0and how they relate to machines.\u00a0Digital security involves computers: complex, unstable, buggy computers.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI especially like how I phrased it in 2016:\u00a0\u2018Cryptography is harder than it looks, primarily because it looks like math. Both algorithms and protocols can be precisely defined and analyzed. This\u00a0isn\u2019t\u00a0easy, and\u00a0there\u2019s\u00a0a lot of insecure crypto out there, but we cryptographers have gotten\u00a0pretty good\u00a0at getting this part right.\u00a0However, math has no agency; it can\u2019t\u00a0actually secure anything. For cryptography to work, it needs to be written in software, embedded in a larger software system, managed by an operating system, run on hardware, connected to a network, and configured and\u00a0operated\u00a0by users. Each of these steps brings\u00a0with it difficulties and vulnerabilities.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s\u00a0a lesson we have all learned over the decades. Cryptography\u00a0is\u00a0still necessary for cybersecurity\u2014although I\u00a0wouldn\u2019t\u00a0have used that word back then\u2014but\u00a0is not sufficient. There are\u00a0particular attack\u00a0and forms of mass surveillance\u00a0that cryptography prevents. But as computers have infused throughout our lives, and networks have\u00a0connected\u00a0all those computers, those aspects of cybersecurity have become increasingly important, and vulnerable.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday, the cybersecurity world is changing yet again, this time due to the capabilities of artificial intelligence.\u00a0AI\u00a0isn\u2019t\u00a0advancing cryptography, but\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0changing cybersecurity. AI has\u00a0demonstrated\u00a0a superhuman ability to find vulnerabilities in software and to write exploits.\u00a0A similar ability to write patches is probably coming.\u00a0This has profound implications for both attackers and defenders, and it is unclear who will win the particular arms race<\/a> in a world of what I call instant software.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As part of their 20th Anniversary celebration, Dark Reading asked five cybersecurity industry leaders who wrote blogs or columns for them over the years to select their favorite piece and share their reflections on the topic today. This is my section. Renowned technologist and author Bruce Schneier contributed a column on June 20, 2010, warning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-container-style":"default","site-container-layout":"default","site-sidebar-layout":"default","disable-article-header":"default","disable-site-header":"default","disable-site-footer":"default","disable-content-area-spacing":"default","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,290,892,90,53],"tags":[91],"class_list":["post-3449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ai","category-applied-cryptography","category-cryptography","category-cybersecurity","category-uncategorized","tag-cybersecurity"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Intersection of Encryption and AI - Imperative Business Ventures Limited<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.ibvl.in\/index.php\/2026\/06\/02\/the-intersection-of-encryption-and-ai\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Intersection of Encryption and AI - Imperative Business Ventures Limited\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As part of their 20th Anniversary celebration, Dark Reading asked five cybersecurity industry leaders who wrote blogs or columns for them over the years to select their favorite piece and share their reflections on the topic today. 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