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Mathematician warns US spies may be weakening next-gen encryption

newscientist.com

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Re: Mathematician warns US spies may be weakening next-gen encryption

#41

Post by riffraff »

samdcbu wrote: post #24
tptacek wrote: post #20

I've been in rooms watching cryptographers trying to figure out what exactly it is Bernstein was saying with that blog post for the past week, and I do not believe that Matthew Sparkes at The New Scientist understands it any better than they do. Since Sparkes doesn't have any direct reporting from Bernstein, and nobody here cares about the NIST quotes, the right thing to do here is to treat this story as a dupe.

> that blog post for the past week https://blog.cr.yp.to/20231003-countcorrectly.html

Thanks for sharing. That's a long and tough read (in his style) but pretty interesting.

Re: Mathematician warns US spies may be weakening next-gen encryption

#42

Post by tptacek »

riffraff wrote: post #41
samdcbu wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that blog post for the past week https://blog.cr.yp.to/20231003-countcorrectly.html

Thanks for sharing. That's a long and tough read (in his style) but pretty interesting.

Is it? Can you summarize it? I'm asking seriously.

This is not his style, for what it's worth, at least not for standalone long-form writing. His most influential cryptography writing is concise and lucid.

Re: Mathematician warns US spies may be weakening next-gen encryption

#43

Post by groestl »

tptacek wrote: post #35
groestl wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is very likely the NSA has an good understanding of the weaknesses of various algorithms in the face of their technology. After all that's their job. The comment above also makes sense when the NIST is advised by the NSA to influence their processes as to choose algorithms to their liking, no design by NIST needed.

The "major security problem" the previous commenter is referring to is an NSA design, not a competition winner. I think what's happened here is that you've read the preceding comment too generously, in particular by skipping big chunks of it.

I did not skip any parts, previous commenter is generalizing from this major security problem to a non-trustworthy NIST in general, and one power NIST has is to choose algorithms as standards which are known (to them) to be weak. While this is a discussion on probability and trustworthiness, where you can reasonably take stand on both sides, the argument itself is sound.

Re: Mathematician warns US spies may be weakening next-gen encryption

#44

Post by kube-system »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #9
marcyb5st wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that in one I can say "my president is an idiot. We need a leadership change" without wiping my credit score or being detained.

Ha, you can say that in China too (about the US president lol).

A classic joke! https://youtu.be/9qh-1_tXeuQ?t=30

Re: Mathematician warns US spies may be weakening next-gen encryption

#45

Post by tptacek »

groestl wrote: post #43
tptacek wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "major security problem" the previous commenter is referring to is an NSA design, not a competition winner. I think what's happened here is that you've read the preceding comment too generously, in particular by skipping big chunks of it.

I did not skip any parts, previous commenter is generalizing from this major security problem to a non-trustworthy NIST in general, and one power NIST has is to choose algorithms as standards which are known (to them) to be weak. While this is a discussion on probability and trustworthiness, where you can reasonably take stand on both sides, the argument itself is sound.

Yeah, you did. "any non-trivial numbers have to have a documented generation path, and any non-trivial numbers in those steps also have to have a documented generation path". This doesn't make any sense as a concern if you understand what Kyber is.

Re: Mathematician warns US spies may be weakening next-gen encryption

#46

Post by friendzis »

marcyb5st wrote: post #5
garba_dlm wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so essentially: "because you only have worse choices"

Except that in one I can say "my president is an idiot. We need a leadership change" without wiping my credit score or being detained.

Half seriously, what's the difference between your career ruined via social credit being wiped by government or your career ruined via social credit being wiped on Twitter?

Re: Mathematician warns US spies may be weakening next-gen encryption

#47

Post by riffraff »

diogenes4 wrote: post #2

Why does anyone take a US-based seriously as a standards authority? It seems like a transparent conflict of interest.

NIST promotes open competitions with many non-US based participants, e.g. AES was designed by Belgian researchers.

These is somewhat better than not having such a system at all.

If nothing else, you get to benefit from public analysis and pick another of the algorithms that get proposed in the competition, even if it's not the NIST-blessed one.

Re: Mathematician warns US spies may be weakening next-gen encryption

#48

Post by mesebrec »

gmerc wrote: post #37
tptacek wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NIST standardized AES and SHA3, two designs nobody believes are compromised. The reason people trust AES and SHA3 is that they're the products of academic competitions that NIST refereed, rather than designs that NSA produced, as was the case with earlier standards. CRYSTALS-Kyber is, like AES and SHA3, the product of an academic competition that NIST simply refereed.

The man walked into a bank many times over his life, no way he could decide to rob it one day.

You are creating a strawman.

The original argument is not "they created encryption that isn't broken before". The argument is "encryption created by competitions that are only refereed by NIST is trustworthy"

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