Infosec debate rages on the meaning of the word “crypto” • The Register

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According to industry veteran Bruce Schneier, Poll Infosec needs to ‘grab’ the word crypto from people trading Bitcoin and other digital currencies – and it seems some readers of Reg agree while others disagree.

“I’ve been annoyed for a long time that the word ‘crypto’ has been co-opted by blockchain folks and no longer refers to ‘cryptography’,” Schneier wrote in a classically brief article Monday.

He linked up with a Guardian featurette about using the crypto prefix, which is now mostly synonymous in the public mind with sharp hucksters pumping unlikely get-rich-quick scams based on cartoon memes.

“’Crypto’ for decades has been used as a shorthand and as a prefix for things crypto-related,” insisted Grauniad Amie Stepanovich, executive director of the Silicon Flatirons Center at the University of Colorado Law School. She is credited as the creator of a series of twee t-shirts emblazoned with “Crypto: It means ‘cryptography’”.

Alex Bloor, managing director of altnet Andrews & Arnold, posted a call similar to Stepanovic’s on Twitter:

Please can we use the term “crypto” to mean cryptography and not cryptocurrency?

Crypto was there before cryptocurrency, it means more to society and offers more benefit to the world than harm. Cryptocurrency, not so much.

– 𝗕𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗿 ᶦˢ ˢᵗᶦˡˡ ᵘⁿᶜᵒⁿᵛᶦⁿᶜᵉᵈ ᵇʸ ᵇˡᵒᶜᵏᶜʰᵃᶦⁿ (@alexbloor) November 16, 2021

John Young, creator of the venerable Cryptome classified repository, observed, “Cypherpunk is crypto’s passphrase.”

Using ad technology company Google’s search engine to search for cryptopunks, we found that the first page of results all advertised Cryptopunks (note plural) as “a collection of non-fungible tokens on the blockchain. Ethereum ”.

In its original form, cryptopunk was another term for a cypherpunk, a late 1980s American subculture devoted to online privacy.

Non-fungible tokens (aka NFT) appear to be the latest pyramid schemes or money laundering schemes of our time. People are coughing up money for a copy of a .jpg file, with a receipt of this baffling decision kept in a random blockchain, and it’s all supposed to be worth a lot of money, at least in the eyes of some people. .

Meanwhile, Chris Kubecka, president of the Middle East Institute and infosec veteran, pointed out that languages ​​evolve naturally.

“Words change over time, transform, etc.,” she said in a tweet. “The general public has probably heard the term crypto for cryptocurrency vs encryption more often.”

Sophos threat researcher Andrew Brandt intervened with Schneier brevity, telling your correspondent: “Crypto means cryptography.” Brandt’s post was first echoed by Neil Brown, technical attorney at decoded.legal, but then he changed that – with a straight face, as he told us – to say, “Does anyone does one really care? I mean, really?

Kubecka added: “Most infosec are young; many are female. Putting on a gray beard shouldn’t be a standard on how the terms are used today.”

Then there’s the fact that crypto- means secret or hidden, from the Greek kruptos, so should it really automatically be cryptographic by default? Does cryptography manage to seize it exclusively?

As the debate roars, we have decided to ease the situation by opening the floor to you, dear reader. What do you think of the word? Crush the buttons in the poll below and let us know. ®

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