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NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit against the US government

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Re: NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit against the US government

#201

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

MauranKilom wrote: post #169
xt00 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of dual-EC -- it does seem like 2 questions seem to be often debated, but it can't be neglected that some of the vocal debaters may be NSA shills: 1. does the use of standards actually help people, or make it easier for the NSA to determine which encryption method was used? 2. are there encryption methods that actually do not suffer from reductions in randomness or entropy etc when just simply running the al…

> are there encryption methods that actually do not suffer from reductions in randomness or entropy etc when just simply running the algorithm on the encrypted output multiple times? Unless you can prove that all e.g. 2^256 possible 256 bit inputs map to 2^256 different 256 bit outputs (for every key, in the case of encryption), then chances are you lose strength with every application because multiple inputs map to…

it's very easy to prove that all encryption functions are 1 to 1. Otherwise, you couldn't decrypt the data.

Re: NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit against the US government

#202

Post by aumerle »

bsaul wrote: post #94

side question : I've only recently started to digg a bit deeper into crypto algorithms ( looking into various types of curves etc), and it gave me the uneasing feeling that the whole industry is relying on the expertise of only a handful of guys to actually ensure that crypto schemes used today are really working. Am i wrong ? are there actually thousands and thousands of people with the expertise to actually proove…

Proof! the entire field of cryptography can prove absolutely nothing other than that a single use of One time pad is secure. the rest is all hand waving, that boils down to no-one I know knows how to do this, and I cant do it myself, so I believe it's secure.

So the best we have in cryptography is trusting "human instincts/judgements" about various algorithms. Which then further reduces to trusting humans.

Re: NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit against the US government

#203

Post by tptacek »

daneel_w wrote: post #174
tptacek wrote: post #32

I may believe almost all of this is overblown and silly, as like a matter of cryptographic research, but I'll say that Matt Topic and Merrick Wayne are the real deal, legit the lawyers you want working on something like this, and if they're involved, presumably some good will come out of the whole thing. Matt Topic is probably best known as the FOIA attorney who got the Laquan McDonald videos released in Chicago; I'v…

> "I may believe almost all of this is overblown and silly, as like a matter of cryptographic research ..." Am I misunderstanding you, or are you saying that you believe almost all of DJB's statements claiming that NIST/NSA is doctoring cryptography is overblown and silly? If that's the case, would you mind elaborating?

I believe the implication that NIST or NSA somehow bribed one of the PQC researchers to weaken a submission is risible.

I believe that NIST is obligated to be responsive to FOIA requests, even if the motivation behind those requests is risible.

Re: NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit against the US government

#204

Post by oittaa »

danuker wrote: post #193
ok_dad wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the United States is more about charging people with crimes and ruining their lives that way rather than disappearing people. Russia might kill you with Polonium and make sure everyone knows it, but America will straight up “legally“ torture you in prison via several means and then argue successfully that those methods were legal and convince the world you weren’t tortured. Anyone who’s a target for that trea…

McAfee and Epstein pop to mind. Maybe also Aaron Swartz.

It seems silly to me how so many people immediately dismiss anyone even suggesting that something fishy was going on with those cases, when we already know about MKUltra, Tuskegee expirement, etc.

Re: NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit against the US government

#205

Post by tptacek »

NolF wrote: post #197
encryptluks2 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no doubt that they are great at their job, but when it comes to lawsuits the judge(s) are equally as important. You could get everything right but a judge has extreme power to interpret the law or even ignore it in select cases.

I wouldn't say they ignore the law, but legislation like FOIA has a lot of discretion to balance competing interests and that's where a judge would make the most different despite all the great articulations of the most brilliant lawyers.

There are very few public bodies that do a solid, to-the-letter job of complying with their open records requirements. Almost all FOIA failings are due to the fact that it isn't staffed adequately; FOIA officers, clerks, and records attorneys are all overworked. When you do a bunch of FOIA stuff, you get a feel for what's going on with the other side, and you build a lot of empathy (which is helpful in getting your data over the long run).

And then other times you run into bloody-mindedness, or worse.

I don't think NIST has many excuses here. It looks like they botched this straightforwardly.

It's a straightforward case. My bet is that they'll lose it. The documents will get delivered. That'll be the end of it.

Re: NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit against the US government

#206

Post by tptacek »

jeffparsons wrote: post #160
jacooper wrote: post #129

Flippo valrosida and Matthey green aren't too happy. https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/15556838562625208...

I think this is a sloppy take. If you read the full back-and-forth on the FOI request between D.J. Bernstein and NIST, it becomes readily apparent that there is _something_ rotten in the state of NIST. Now of course that doesn't necessarily mean that NIST's work is completely compromised by the NSA (even though it has been in the past), but there are other problems that are similarly serious. For example, if NIST is…

All you're saying here is that NIST failed to comply with FOIA. That's not unusual. No public body does a reliably good job of complying with FOIA, and many public bodies seem to have a bad habit of pre-judging the "merits" of FOIA requests, when no merit threshold exists for their open records requirements.

NIST failing to comply with FOIA makes them an intransigent public body, like all the rest of them, from your local water reclamation board to the Department of Energy.

It emphatically does not lend support to any of this litigants concerns about the PQC process. I don't know enough (really, anything) about the PQC "contest" to judge claims about its validity, but I do know enough --- like, the small amount of background information needed --- to say that it's risible to suggest that any of the participating teams were compromised by intelligence agencies; that claim having been made in this post saps its credibility.

So, two things I think a reasonable person would want to establish here: first, that NIST's behavior with respect to the FOIA request is hardly any kind of smoking gun, and second that the narrative being presented in this post about the PQC contest seems somewhere between "hand-wavy" and "embarrassing".

Re: NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit against the US government

#207

Post by oittaa »

effie wrote: post #168
taliesinb wrote: post #33

Why is the submission URL using http instead of https? That just seems... bizarre.

Why? Http is simpler, less fragile, not dependent on good will of third parties, the content is public, and proving authenticity of text on Internet is always hard, even when served via the https scheme. I bet Bernstein thinks there is little point in forcing people to use https to read his page.

That's just wrong on so many levels. Troy Hunt has an excellent explanation: https://www.troyhunt.com/heres-why-your-static-website-needs...

Re: NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit against the US government

#208

Post by javajosh »

tptacek wrote: post #200
josh2600 wrote: post #170

I just want to say, the problem here is worldwide standards bodies for encryption need to be trustworthy. It is incredibly hard to know what encryption is actually real without a deep mathematics background and even then, a choir of peers must be able to present algorithms, and audits of those algorithms with a straight face. Presenting broken-by-design encryption undermines public confidence in what should be one of…

There's an easier problem here, which is that our reliance on formal standards bodies for the selection of cryptography constructions is bad, and, not hardly just at NIST, has been over the last 20 years mostly a force for evil. One of the most important "standards" in cryptography, the Noise Protocol Framework, will probably never be a formal standard. But on the flip side, no formal standards body is going to crud…

Believing both "Don't roll your own crypto" and "Don't trust the standards" would seem to leave the average developer in something of a quandry, no?

Re: NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit against the US government

#209

Post by discordance »

danuker wrote: post #193
ok_dad wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the United States is more about charging people with crimes and ruining their lives that way rather than disappearing people. Russia might kill you with Polonium and make sure everyone knows it, but America will straight up “legally“ torture you in prison via several means and then argue successfully that those methods were legal and convince the world you weren’t tortured. Anyone who’s a target for that trea…

McAfee and Epstein pop to mind. Maybe also Aaron Swartz.

Assange too.

Re: NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit against the US government

#210

Post by tptacek »

silisili wrote: post #182
jacooper wrote: post #129

Flippo valrosida and Matthey green aren't too happy. https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/15556838562625208...

What's with the infighting here? Nothing about the post comes across as conspiracy theory level or reputation ruining. It makes me question the motives of those implying he's crazy, to be honest.

Post-quantum cryptography is essentially a full-employment program for elite academic public key cryptographers, which is largely what the "winning" PQC teams consist of. So, yeah, suggesting that one of those teams was compromised by an intelligence agency is "conspiracy theory level".

Nobody is denying the legitimacy of the suit itself. NIST is obligated to follow public records law, and public records law is important. Filippo's message, which we're all commenting on here, says that directly.

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