The Curse of Cryptographic Numerology
Ian Grigg, Peter Gutmann · IEEE Security & Privacy · 2011
Cryptographic numerology states that as long as your encryption keys are at least "this big," you're fine, even if none of the surrounding infrastructure benefits from that size or even works at all. The significant slowdown arising from the application of cryptographic numerology will discourage the global uptake of cryptographically secured protocols because of the unnecessary crypto costs. Such an approach is making us less, not more, secure.