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What’s The Difference Between ECDSA and EdDSA?

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I once received a question in a Cisco certification exam, and it said:

What does WEP stand for?
A Wired Equivalent Privacy
B Wireless Equals Protocol
C Wireless Enabled Protocol
D Wired Embedded Privacy

I basically couldn’t find the answer, which I think should have been:

E Basically I don’t care, but I could explain how it works!

After that point, I kinda gave up on my Cisco Instructor training, as the assessment of something like understanding what an acronym meant was in no way intellectually stimulating. The practical side of the Cisco training, though, was amazing, and I learn so much from it. But, we need to guard against creating a professional that is so superficial, that we struggle to get past the acronyms and fail to understand the understand core principles of the cybersecurity discipline. Luckily, there are frameworks such as CyBoK, and which aim to make sure that we cover the core principles within academic programmes.

So, what’s the difference between ECDSA and EdDSA?

Well, if you’re into cybersecurity, hopefully, you see beyond the fact that ECDSA stands for Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm, and EdDSA stands for Edwards-curve Digital Signature Algorithm. Both are used to create…

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Prof Bill Buchanan OBE FRSE
ASecuritySite: When Bob Met Alice

Professor of Cryptography. Serial innovator. Believer in fairness, justice & freedom. Based in Edinburgh. Old World Breaker. New World Creator. Building trust.