AES vs. ChaCha20: The Elegance of Simplicity in Cryptography

2025-04-14
AES vs. ChaCha20: The Elegance of Simplicity in Cryptography

This article explores two widely used symmetric encryption algorithms: AES and ChaCha20. While AES is powerful, its complex structure makes it vulnerable to cache-timing attacks and slower without hardware acceleration. In contrast, ChaCha20 uses simpler ARX operations, resulting in faster speeds, higher security, and consistent performance across various architectures, avoiding cache-timing attacks. The article concludes that simpler designs often lead to greater security, efficiency, and understandability, with ChaCha20 being a prime example of this principle.

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Securing Secrets in Modern Docker Compose Deployments

2025-02-03
Securing Secrets in Modern Docker Compose Deployments

This guide explores best practices for managing secrets in Docker Compose, moving from basic to more secure approaches. It highlights the risks of using environment variables and .env files, demonstrating how secrets can be exposed. The article details three methods: using environment variables mounted as files, file-based secrets mounted from the host, and leveraging Docker Compose's secrets feature with granular access control. It emphasizes the importance of secure file management, avoiding hardcoding secrets, and using tools like Phase to streamline the process, ultimately aiming to enhance security and prevent incidents.

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Development Secret Management