
PCloud Crypto Hacking Challenge – Prove You Can Break Our Client-Side Encryption - flexie
https://www.pcloud.com/challenge/
======
dalke
As Moxie Marlinspike pointed out in "The Fallacy Of The Crypto Contest" at
[http://thoughtcrime.org/blog/telegram-crypto-
challenge/](http://thoughtcrime.org/blog/telegram-crypto-challenge/) these
sorts of contests are rigged.

The challenge page says:

> Within the next three months we will give you access to a pCloud Challenge
> account, containing an encrypted folder. If you find out what is inside the
> Crypto Folder and send it back to us .. in decrypted state, we will give you
> $20,000

Marlinspike points out, regarding a different challenge set up with similar
principles, that it's easy to construct a 'horrifically bad “secure” protocol
that wouldn’t last a second in a real world environment, but becomes
“unbreakable” when presented in the exact same framework' as the proposed
rules.

"Contests like these are tools in the service of snake oil.".

Don't use encryption that isn't open to public inspection. Don't support snake
oil encryption peddlers.

