Sophie Schmieg

4.7K Followers
280 Following
5.5K Posts

Leading cryptography (ISE Crypto) at Google.

Opinions my own.

Content usually badly explained mathematics

professioncryptography engineer
hobbyKerbal Space Program
hobbyLego
hobbyFactory Sim Games

I have to say, publishing results as zero knowledge proof does have one benefit: it tricks security researchers into learning about quantum circuits. This is some amazing work!

https://blog.trailofbits.com/2026/04/17/we-beat-googles-zero-knowledge-proof-of-quantum-cryptanalysis/

We beat Google’s zero-knowledge proof of quantum cryptanalysis

Trail of Bits discovered and exploited memory safety and logic vulnerabilities in Google’s Rust zero-knowledge proof code to forge a proof claiming better quantum circuit performance metrics than Google’s original results, demonstrating unique security risks in zkVM systems.

The Trail of Bits Blog

I'm being quoted. Apocalypse! It's the end of the world (as we know it)! Oh noes!

https://gizmodo.com/how-should-we-prepare-for-the-looming-quantum-encryption-apocalypse-2000744543

How Should We Prepare for the Looming Quantum Encryption Apocalypse?

The dreaded Q-day could arrive sooner than expected, and when it does, experts say we need to be ready.

Gizmodo

So someone made this post on Mastodon:
https://infosec.exchange/@catsalad/116268399785747534

And that led another person to make this site: https://boat.horse/clock/index.html

This feels like some real old school internet stuff. For the younger folks out there, this is the kind of stuff that would pop up all the time on the internet in the late 90s and early 00s. No reason for it beyond it being cool and beautiful.

While the animated clock in the link sort of hurts my head, it still is beautiful.

@sophieschmieg It's an irony (of biblical proportions) that the same people who'd undoubtably like to make blasphemy illegal in the US would be the first people actually guilty of it.
I'm expecting Vance's excommunication and the formation of the MAGA antipope any day now.

For crying out loud, ABC news, never send a line graph to do a bar chart’s job.

Link: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-21/midnight-oil-rob-hirst-pancreatic-cancer-death/106252876

[Edited 16 April 2026 to add that they’ve converted the line graph to a bar graph now, on the linked page. Thanks to @whybird ]

I wrote up in the TLS mailing list why I think composite signatures (ML-DSA + ECDSA/RSA) are a net negative, will hurt the ecosystem, and should not be implemented.

Hybrid key exchange was simple and self-contained. Hybrid signatures would be a mountain of complexity in code responsible for half of sev:crit in crypto libraries since 2020.

https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/tls/oh3jmmkHzHdp1hk4R4M9QjkmvBk/

[TLS] Re: Composite ML-DSA

Search IETF mail list archives

Faktencheck: Ist Donald Trump wirklich Jesus? https://www.der-postillon.com/2026/04/trump-vs-jesus.html
Faktencheck: Ist Donald Trump wirklich Jesus?

Nachdem Donald Trump ein KI-generiertes Bild von sich als Jesus veröffentlichte, war die Empörung so groß, dass der US-Präsident das Bild i...

Blogger

The Post-Quantum League of Evil endorses @tom7 httpv for maximum classical security. Future work hopefully will include a post-quantum key exchange as well.

https://youtu.be/M1si1y5lvkk?is=P4jFTJyzn3lsJUof

https://tom7.org/httpv/httpv.pdf

No one can force me to have a secure website!!!

YouTube