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“Quantum-Safe” Crypto Hacked by 10-Year-Old PC

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Re: “Quantum-Safe” Crypto Hacked by 10-Year-Old PC

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can anyone do long division other than children and those who pursue math academically? Seems impossible to imagine.

You need to be able to perform long division to take quotients in algebraic structures, e.g. polynomials. Yes, Wolfram Alpha can probably do it, but not always.

You don't need to understand long division to be able to do that. Long division is over the integers. It's got a weird notation, and I never learnt it.

There isn't any reason for 99.9% of mathematicians - even in abstract algebra - to know long division.

Re: “Quantum-Safe” Crypto Hacked by 10-Year-Old PC

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well they for sure have picked a very ironic name for it. "The vault is completely unhackable." "SIKE"

+1, funny -- but for the sake of non-native English speakers, FTR, it's pronounced the same as "psych" and is colloquial for a sarcastic "ha-ha, just kidding"

If you're going to address non-native English speakers, using acronyms like FTR (I suppose that refers to for-the-record, but one can never be sure on the Internet... could easily be something like for-the-retarded in some circles) may not be the best idea, BTW (by the way :D).

Re: “Quantum-Safe” Crypto Hacked by 10-Year-Old PC

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well they for sure have picked a very ironic name for it. "The vault is completely unhackable." "SIKE"

+1, funny -- but for the sake of non-native English speakers, FTR, it's pronounced the same as "psych" and is colloquial for a sarcastic "ha-ha, just kidding"

Thanks. Native speaker, no idea it was used like this.

Re: “Quantum-Safe” Crypto Hacked by 10-Year-Old PC

#165
That's why I like simple hash-based cryptographic algorithms such as Lamport OTP for digital signatures. Hash-based algorithms are broadly believed to be quantum-resistant and this makes sense intuitively because hashing destroys information.

The statefulness of Lamport OTP adds some implementation and usability hurdles but IMO, the simplicity and intuitiveness of the algorithm makes it worthwhile.

Source: I worked on a quantum-resistant blockchain which is based on Lamport OTP and Merkle Signature Trees (for key reuse) - https://capitalisk.com/

Re: “Quantum-Safe” Crypto Hacked by 10-Year-Old PC

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a place where Hanlon's razor applies much better than assuming they want weak encryption.

It really isn't, when the annual budget for states crippling cryptographic standards dwarfs the salaries and tuition of everyone in the global academics maths community combined.

There is seemingly random interconnectedness in math, meaning that governments probably can't just throw money at some problem and force themselves much deeper than academia. For example you can hire 100 number theorists and ask of them to solve factorization (stupid example, i know), but it just might happen that the key insight to solving it comes from some random dude working in some seemingly disconnected problem in combinatorial algebra or something.

Re: “Quantum-Safe” Crypto Hacked by 10-Year-Old PC

#167
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s pretty unlikely that sha2 will ever broken in a way which actually has a meaningful security impact to bitcoin, especially considering that almost every value in the system is sha2(sha2()) which nullifies a lot of attacks against hashes which need careful control of the input. Some newer tools in the system use a single hash (it’s unclear why a double one was used in the first place), but all the same it remains…

Even if you don't reuse keys you will be vulnerable the moment you do the first transaction - it will be the miner who sees your public key first. Even if you mine your own transactions you will be vulnerable, because the block could be orphaned, and anyone could then see your public key.

In case Bitcoin needed to upgrade e.g. secp256k1, then a logical/easy way to avoid this problem is with a simple commitment scheme.

Re: “Quantum-Safe” Crypto Hacked by 10-Year-Old PC

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1, funny -- but for the sake of non-native English speakers, FTR, it's pronounced the same as "psych" and is colloquial for a sarcastic "ha-ha, just kidding"

> it's pronounced the same as "psych" It’s actually spelled “psych.” It’s a derivative of “to psych out.”

We're agreed in how and why to spell it that way. But the bastardized phonetic spelling "sike" is fairly common too.

Re: “Quantum-Safe” Crypto Hacked by 10-Year-Old PC

#169
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My super cynical view is that the whole genre of "quantum safe" cryptography is being promoted to try and encourage adoption of weak encryption... Its felt like FUD based on FUD for a while. Not that I really trust traditional encryption that much either. There wouldn't be so much effort going into bridging air gapped systems if even traditional encryption could be trusted... Hate making cynical comments tho, they al…

> Its felt like FUD based on FUD for a while. Not really...? Quantum stuff is real, there are real quantum computers that have been demonstrated to really do quantum operations. They're not close to being usable to break crypto yet, but it certainly makes sense to get ahead of it. > There wouldn't be so much effort going into bridging air gapped systems if even traditional encryption could be trusted... These are com…

>but it certainly makes sense to get ahead of it.

Assuming they will exist.

And assuming there exists math that can't be solved easily by quantum computers that solve all math solution finding problems easily.

Surely it makes no sense to adopt encryption no one but a few individuals of questionable motives understand, to protect against a technology that is a long way from even proven yet. IMHO.

Anything else requires several leaps of faith that should be no where near "in use" encryption - research is of course a very different story, but stories like this are hardly confidence inspiring.

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