Nadim Kobeissi

I wrote an essay on Cedarcrypt and on why I teach cryptography in Lebanon. The essay also links to the full Cedarcrypt 2026 photo album, which is now online. symbolic.software/blog/2026-07...

An internal model at OpenAI has produced a claimed refutation of ETH! Russell Impagliazzo, Mohan Paturi, and I have been asked to help organize an open and independent examination of this claim. 1/4

Join us for Cryptographic Protocol Analysis for the Rest of Us w/ Nadim Kobeissi. luma.com/5e9nhd3p #OSTIF #meetups #verifpal #cryptography

Brazil going the way of South Korea. Basically around the world women are desperately trying to keep power out of the hands of incredibly stupid fascistic grifters while men keep trying to hand it over. Men are an embarrassing cringe gender.

More zany ai math results. www.theverge.com/ai-artificia... CS community seems pretty freaked/excited

Me, to Claude Code: “I have a friend coming over. Modify Pac-Man to support a horizontal display with two player co-op, where player 2 is Ms. Pac-Man. Make one button be a speed boost. My Mistercade cabinet is at 192.168.1.102” Claude, two hours later: “The game is loaded up and ready to play”

This November, there will be two types of people: those who want to steal cars and engage in wanton criminal behavior, and those who want to be a fairy boy who grew up in a forest and is sent on a quest to save the world by a tree, and ends up marrying a fish along the way (I am in the second camp)

I feel this in my bones 😖

My favorite part of going to the sauna is, while leaving, warning entrants in a solemn, low serious voice to “be careful, it’s really hot in there”.

Maybe cryptography code should try compressing private keys and if they compress a lot reject them outright? I think that would universally catch stuff like this.

France will clean its streets within a week. The footage will stay online until the 2027 election. Information warfare active during French riots, various Russian sources too. Including the top-down approach (start from high level policymakers, go to the bottom).

Meanwhile the Engineers are just lighting themselves on fire to see what happens. COMIC ◆ www.smbc-comics.com/comic/reacti... PATREON ◆ www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersm... STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com

Actually maybe this is the solution to the Fermi Paradox. COMIC ◆ www.smbc-comics.com/comic/chip PATREON ◆ www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersm... STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com

Lebanon has taken the historic step of entering direct negotiations with Israel, but the continued destruction of villages threatens to undermine the Trilateral Framework and erode Lebanese public confidence in diplomacy and the Lebanese state.

Plus ça change…

I’m so excited about Ocarina of Time. I think about it all day!

“Our case is the most documented instance of Israeli forces targeting the press on record... If we cannot get answers in the face of such overwhelming evidence, what does it mean for the hundreds of journalists killed by Israeli fire throughout the region for which there is no such evidence?”

Beirut, Lebanon by Eric Lafforgue

Photo of me assembling a watch movement last week.

WHEN THE LIGHT IS RUNNING LOW AND THE SHADOWS START TO GROW AND THE PLACES THAT YOU KNOW SEEM LIKE FANTASY THERE'S A LIGHT INSIDE YOUR SOUL THAT'S STILL SHINING IN THE COLD WITH THE TRUTH THE PROMISE IN OUR HEARTS

I think this is the most important paper I’ve written in quite a while, I would really appreciate discussion and feedback: eprint.iacr.org/2026/2441

Don’t Forget

This entire ad reads like a very subtle and well-written comedic jab at British society.

With Israel’s election two weeks away, Lesley Stahl travels to the West Bank, where militant Israeli settlers have carried out violent attacks against the Palestinians, often with impunity. The Israeli government is showing an unwillingness to crack down on the violence. Tonight on 60 Minutes.

I was invited to give this lecture/tutorial on Verifpal to undergraduate students just learning about cryptography. My thanks to the University of Edinburgh Informatics Department for this wonderful opportunity. It was great to meet so many students! www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYUo...

Laughing my ass off at one of the most conceited people in formal methods being shown that their work was full of soundness bugs and, given that they don't have any other defense, seeing them resort to publicly denouncing the audit/fixes as having "morally questionable elements" because it used AI

This has consistently been the music I put on this year when I'm working on a new idea I'm excited about:

I understand being amazed, bewildered, upset, horrified, excited, depressed, and many other things about this. I do not understand people saying it should be ignored or isn't real. I don't see how you can claim it doesn't matter without also claiming pure math doesn't matter.

Someone records your passport chip being read, then finds a hotel's scan of your photo page. With the older BAC protocol, they can decrypt the recording. Can they with newer ePassport protocols? We modeled this and 12 other passport questions in Verifpal: symbolic.software/blog/2026-10...

Check out Symbolic Software's brand new company website! For the full experience, I encourage you to take a look on desktop, the mobile website is fairly compressed. symbolic.software

Sonic Is Getting An Extremely Expensive And Rare Porcelain Statue

Today’s weight lifting music

Today, @wired.com is publishing Choke Points, an 18-month investigation into how Israel’s network of checkpoints, gates, and roadblocks is reshaping daily life for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. A thread on the reporting, and what we found:

music.apple.com/fr/album/ayu...

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door inadvertently depicts Peach as the quickest typist in the world. She is able to type up a 126-word email in exactly 3 seconds, making her 8 times faster than the current typing speed world record.

Lebanon Official Entry to the 99th Oscars Best International Feature Film

The latest urgent research from the Center for the Alignment of AI Alignment Centers: alignmentalignment.ai/caaac/blog/p...

Today’s weight lifting music

I am now 36 years old. This is, according to my wife, much better than me being 30 years old, because at 30, I was “an idiot”.

🚨‼️BREAKING: MY MOTHER DESCRIBED MY HUMMUS AS “PERFECT”

My mother is visiting me in France and we have combined Gogeta-style to make THE ULTIMATE HUMMUS

He's only given one final week to live but having a salary is nice. COMIC ◆ www.smbc-comics.com/comic/all-ri... PATREON ◆ www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersm... STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com