Cryptography expert needed
[This is my response to a job post on Upwork. Just for a record.]
Cover Letter
Hi there,
You seems to have quite large list of desirable skills up there. I suppose it is not expected to be covered by a single person, otherwise I wouldn’t dare applying for the position.
I have got a Bachelor in Computer Science degree and a Computer Systems Engineering degree from a National Technical University of Ukraine and some cryptography background as well.
At any rate, I see a number of familiar items in the list, so if you’re after hiring a team, I think I might bring value to your project as one of the team members.
Additional Questions:
what experience have you had with cryptography?
My professional cryptography experience is mostly organizational. I’ve been in charge of researching network security and cryptography best practices, setting up PKI systems, enforcing security policies, investigating breaches.
While studying for may degrees, I was caught by the marvels of machine learning and artificial intelligence, although I didn’t delve into it deeply.
In my childhood, when I didn’t have a computer yet, I had a great interest in popular cryptography: Cardan grille, secret spoken and written languages. I have also been reading popular science periodicals and books on combinatorial problems avidly.
why are you perfect for this job?
My path towards the Unix Administration field lay through the security related hacking experiments. That had founded substantial security grounds in my vision as a Unix Administrator for the whole of my career.
I am usually a little over-concerned about security in most of the projects I do. Sometimes it appears to be detrimental, but I see it as an advantage in your type of a project.
What are your thoughts on security?
There is nothing like an “absolute security”. Any system is only secure to some extent.
This also applies to cryptography: any cyphertext is only safe for a certain amount of time, be it a week or a century. It cannot be safe forever.
Also, I usually remind to my clients that “security = 1 / convenience”.
The art of cryptography and security in general is in striking the balance between the complexity (which is basically the price) of the system and the timeframe it is expected to be secure.