[Ach] meta-question on algorithm agility

[René Pfeiffer]

On May 02, 2014 at 2320 +0100, ianG appeared and said:
> Question for the assembled, on the experiences of the group so far:
> 
> What proportion of effort has been spent on the question of
> configuration strings that set the algorithm possibilities?  E.g., the
> famous OpenSSL blah:blah:blah string.
> …
> Imagine that algorithm agility was banned.  No more choice!  How much
> resource would this free up?

I am not sure if this is buying you anything. You could reduce all choices
and reduce the whole IT landscape to a couple of building blocks with no
choices. This frees up a lot of resources until this infrastructure suffers
from a critical bug.

Besides you have to look for other choices anyway since algorithms age. AES
may be around for a while and your Best Choice™ right now, but people still
invent new algorithms. I don't think this is a waste of resources.

Best,
René.

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