[akerl_]

I’d wager that something like 90% of developers who look at that page should close the tab instead of reading any of it.

If you’re building a system and need crypto… pick the canonical library for the ecosystem or language you’re working in. Don’t try to build your own collection of primitives.

[rubendev]

Also, I gave the link to the appendix because there was a specific question about Argon2 parameters. For general developer audiences, they need to look at the standard itself which is a lot more high level about how to properly implement cryptography in software: https://github.com/OWASP/ASVS/blob/master/5.0/en/0x20-V11-Cr...

For the most common use-cases of cryptography like authentication and secure communication there is more specific, but still high level guidance that is useful for developers as well:

- https://github.com/OWASP/ASVS/blob/master/5.0/en/0x21-V12-Se...

- https://github.com/OWASP/ASVS/blob/master/5.0/en/0x18-V9-Sel...

- https://github.com/OWASP/ASVS/blob/master/5.0/en/0x15-V6-Aut...

[tptacek]

This standard is bad. People should avoid it. For example: 11.2.2 (cryptographic agility) is an anti-pattern in modern cryptographic engineering.

[rubendev]

Please elaborate why you believe that? The ability to easily rotate encryption keys is considered an anti pattern?

[rubendev]

Yes I fully agree. I’m a big fan of libraries like Google Tink that make you pick a use case and use the best implementation for that use case with built in crypto agility.

Most crypto libraries are not built like that however. They just give you a big pile of primitives/algorithms to choose from. Then frameworks get built on top of that, not always taking into account best practices, and leave people that are serious about security the job of making sure the implementation is secure. This is the point where you need something like ASVS.

[akerl_]

What language today still doesn't have a de facto simplified toolbox for wrapping crypto operations?

If you're a developer, and you start trying to perform crypto operations for your service and the library you chose is making you question which cipher, what KDF parameters, or what DH group you want, that is 100% a red flag and you should promptly stop using that crypto library.

[rubendev]

Can you give some examples of such commonly used libraries for languages like Java / C# / C++?

In my experience there are not many libraries like Google Tink around, and they are not in widespread use at all. Most applications doing encryption manually for specific purposes still have the words AES, CBC, GCM, IV etc hardcoded in their source code.

If you review such code, it’s still useful to have resources that show industry best practices, but I agree that the gold standard is to not have these details in your own code at all.

[akerl_]

I'd probably look at https://libsodium.gitbook.io/doc/bindings_for_other_language... or https://nacl.cr.yp.to/box.html