Can anyone please explain what this means for someone who doesn't understand crypto?
http://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/10417/explaining-w... does a great job.
A Patent From 2004 Describes Dual EC As Key Escrow
21–30 of 41 posts
Re: A Patent From 2004 Describes Dual EC As Key Escrow
#22See this ladies and gentlemen? This is why you don't patent stuff that's supposed to be secret , regardless of what other people think
It's actually possible to file a patent along with a secrecy order. This is done to protect the government in case someone else ever tries to patent the same idea at a later date. And before someone freaks out, this is not new. It was imposed during WW I, WW II, and then codified in the Invention Secrecy Act of 1952.
Re: A Patent From 2004 Describes Dual EC As Key Escrow
#23Here's the video of the talk from 30c3 that I assume was referenced: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-TM9ubxKIg
It's actually worth watching if you haven't been closely following all of the crypto related revelations this year.
Re: A Patent From 2004 Describes Dual EC As Key Escrow
#24Can anyone please explain what this means for someone who doesn't understand crypto?
I'll give it a shot, but I have absolutely no experience with cryptography.
I found this video to help explain the concept:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulg_AHBOIQU&feature=c4-overvi...
The relationship between P and Q (two points on the elliptic curve, see the video) allows someone to predict the RNG behavior. This is alleged to be used by the NSA, and the paper above predicts this relationship being used to provide an escrow-like ability for a 3rd party to access encrypted data.
Someone please correct me if I am wrong, as I would like to further my understanding as well.
Re: A Patent From 2004 Describes Dual EC As Key Escrow
#25See this ladies and gentlemen? This is why you don't patent stuff that's supposed to be secret , regardless of what other people think
It's actually possible to file a patent along with a secrecy order. This is done to protect the government in case someone else ever tries to patent the same idea at a later date. And before someone freaks out, this is not new. It was imposed during WW I, WW II, and then codified in the Invention Secrecy Act of 1952.
In particular, patent GB630726 by Leo Szilard, Producing neutrons, covering nuclear chain reaction, was one such secret patent. I think it probably was a good idea to keep that secret.
Re: A Patent From 2004 Describes Dual EC As Key Escrow
#26Been waiting a little while for this one to come out. Key escrow schemes were the establishment answer to the problem of crypto enabling crime. The idea was that strong crypto would be outlawed, and the government would instead provide regulated crypto that would include overt backdoors for lawful access. Thankfully, that idea perished in the crypto wars of the '90s. One line of reasoning about Dual EC, the PKRNG tha…
http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/43164/which-prod... Dual_EC_DRBG is actually used in real life products: > we know the RSA BSAFE library uses Dual_EC_DRBG (...) by default, I would guess that this would be the main vector. > As for the use of BSAFE, I can easily find (hint: use your favourite search engine to search for the terms "This product includes" "RSA BSAFE") implementations, oddly skewed towards i…
Once again, the easiest way for me to explain my thoughts about this is to refer back to Lucky Green. It's linked from the Reuters thread on HN.
Re: A Patent From 2004 Describes Dual EC As Key Escrow
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
What a weird question.
The first sentence of your post could be interpreted to mean that you knew about this for "a little while" but decided not to inform the rest of us, in which case I don't think it's that weird to ask "why didn't you tell us?"
Because I wasn't at liberty to.
Re: A Patent From 2004 Describes Dual EC As Key Escrow
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why didn't you come out with it?
What a weird question.
It was the same question I had, in good faith, when I read your comment. In fact, it over rode (in my mind) everything else you wrote - I kept asking myself, "Why was he waiting for it to come out? Did he discover it, and not tell other people? Was he wondering whether this existed, but had not found it? Did he have a colleague tell him they were onto something, and he was waiting for them to publish. Has he known all about this the entire time, and was waiting for the other shoe to drop?"
To some degree, that one sentence, by itself at the head of your comment, captured all of my attention.
Re: A Patent From 2004 Describes Dual EC As Key Escrow
#29See this ladies and gentlemen? This is why you don't patent stuff that's supposed to be secret , regardless of what other people think
It's actually possible to file a patent along with a secrecy order. This is done to protect the government in case someone else ever tries to patent the same idea at a later date. And before someone freaks out, this is not new. It was imposed during WW I, WW II, and then codified in the Invention Secrecy Act of 1952.
More reading: https://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/invention/program.html
Re: A Patent From 2004 Describes Dual EC As Key Escrow
#30See this ladies and gentlemen? This is why you don't patent stuff that's supposed to be secret , regardless of what other people think
It's actually possible to file a patent along with a secrecy order. This is done to protect the government in case someone else ever tries to patent the same idea at a later date. And before someone freaks out, this is not new. It was imposed during WW I, WW II, and then codified in the Invention Secrecy Act of 1952.
Thanks for the information
But is this still needed since the government can bypass patents based on national security issues?