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Cloudflare targets 2029 for full post-quantum security

blog.cloudflare.com

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Re: Cloudflare targets 2029 for full post-quantum security

#21

Post by Hasz »

20k wrote: post #11

Quantum computing, and the generic term 'quantum' is gearing up to be the next speculative investment hype bubble after AI, so prepare for a lot of these kinds of articles

nah. governments around the world are hoovering up traffic today with the hope of a "cheap" (by nation state standards) quantum computer. Some of the secrets sent today are "evergreen" (i.e are still relevant 10+ years into the future), amongst a whole lot of cruft. There is massive incentive to hide the technology to keep your peers transmitting in vulnerable encryption as long as possible.

Re: Cloudflare targets 2029 for full post-quantum security

#22

Post by jgrahamc »

_2fnr wrote: post #17

[flagged]

Cloudflare has long been doing work on PQ (sometimes in conjunction with Google) and rolled out PQ encryption for our customers. You can read about where this all started for us 7 years back: https://blog.cloudflare.com/towards-post-quantum-cryptograph... and four years ago rolled out PQ encryption for all customers: https://blog.cloudflare.com/post-quantum-for-all/

The big change here is that we're going to roll out PQ authentication as well.

One important decision was to make this "included at no extra cost" with every plan. The last thing the Internet needs is blood-sucking parasites charging extra for this.

Re: Cloudflare targets 2029 for full post-quantum security

#24

Post by stingraycharles »

rdl wrote: post #18

It will be interesting to compare PQ rollout to HTTPS rollout historically (either the "SSL becomes widespread in 2015" thing, or the deprecation SSL 3.0). Cloudflare is in an easy position to do stuff like this because it can decouple end user/browser upgrade cycles from backend upgrade cycles. Some browsers and some end user devices get upgraded quickly, so making it easy to make it optionally-PQ on any site, and t…

> Updating websites is going to be so much easier than dealing with other systems (bitcoin probably the worst; data at rest storage systems; hardware).

IPv6 deserves a prominent spot there

Re: Cloudflare targets 2029 for full post-quantum security

#25

Post by OkayPhysicist »

Bender wrote: post #9

Is this still theory or are there working Quantum systems that have broken anything yet?

It's theory. The concern is for avoiding a (likely, IMO) scenario where the only real indication that someone cracked QC is one or more teams of researchers in the field going dark because they got pulled into some tight-lipped NSA project. If we wait until we have an unambiguous path to QC, it might well be too late.

To avoid the scenario where for a prolonged period of time the intelligence community has secret access to QC, researchers against that type of thing are incentivized to shout fire when they see the glimmerings of a possibly productive path of research.

Re: Cloudflare targets 2029 for full post-quantum security

#26

Post by nickspacek »

Hasz wrote: post #21
20k wrote: post #11

Quantum computing, and the generic term 'quantum' is gearing up to be the next speculative investment hype bubble after AI, so prepare for a lot of these kinds of articles

nah. governments around the world are hoovering up traffic today with the hope of a "cheap" (by nation state standards) quantum computer. Some of the secrets sent today are "evergreen" (i.e are still relevant 10+ years into the future), amongst a whole lot of cruft. There is massive incentive to hide the technology to keep your peers transmitting in vulnerable encryption as long as possible.

For sure, that or just ensuring they have laws in place that grant them access to the unencrypted data we are sending to CDNs operating in their jurisdiction (when necessary for national security reasons).

Re: Cloudflare targets 2029 for full post-quantum security

#27

Post by bwesterb »

rdl wrote: post #18

It will be interesting to compare PQ rollout to HTTPS rollout historically (either the "SSL becomes widespread in 2015" thing, or the deprecation SSL 3.0). Cloudflare is in an easy position to do stuff like this because it can decouple end user/browser upgrade cycles from backend upgrade cycles. Some browsers and some end user devices get upgraded quickly, so making it easy to make it optionally-PQ on any site, and t…

Waiting now means rushing even more close to the deadline! We added stats on origin support for post-quantum encryption. Not as much support as browsers of course, but better than I expected. Still a long road (and authentication!). https://radar.cloudflare.com/post-quantum

Re: Cloudflare targets 2029 for full post-quantum security

#28

Post by jeroenhd »

rdl wrote: post #18

It will be interesting to compare PQ rollout to HTTPS rollout historically (either the "SSL becomes widespread in 2015" thing, or the deprecation SSL 3.0). Cloudflare is in an easy position to do stuff like this because it can decouple end user/browser upgrade cycles from backend upgrade cycles. Some browsers and some end user devices get upgraded quickly, so making it easy to make it optionally-PQ on any site, and t…

If any kind of proof about serious quantum computers comes to light, browsers can force most websites' hand by marking non-PQ ciphers as insecure.

Maybe it'll require TLS 1.4/QUIC 2, with no changes but the cipher specifications, but it can happen in two or three years. Certificates themselves don't last longer than a year anyway. Corporations running ancient software that doesn't support PQ TLS will have the same configuration options to ignore the security warnings already present for TLS 1.0/plain HTTP connections.

The biggest problem I can imagine is devices talking to the internet no longer receiving firmware updates. If the web host switches protocols, the old clients will start dying off en masses.

Re: Cloudflare targets 2029 for full post-quantum security

#29

Post by moi2388 »

sophacles wrote: post #19
moi2388 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theory. And afaik there are still questions as to if the PQ algorithms are actually secure.

tbf - since we still don't know if p != np, there are still questions about if the current algorithms are secure also.

Fair, but recently several PQ algorithms have been shown to in fact not be secure, with known attacks, so I wouldn’t equate them

Re: Cloudflare targets 2029 for full post-quantum security

#30

Post by bwesterb »

jeroenhd wrote: post #28
rdl wrote: post #18

It will be interesting to compare PQ rollout to HTTPS rollout historically (either the "SSL becomes widespread in 2015" thing, or the deprecation SSL 3.0). Cloudflare is in an easy position to do stuff like this because it can decouple end user/browser upgrade cycles from backend upgrade cycles. Some browsers and some end user devices get upgraded quickly, so making it easy to make it optionally-PQ on any site, and t…

If any kind of proof about serious quantum computers comes to light, browsers can force most websites' hand by marking non-PQ ciphers as insecure. Maybe it'll require TLS 1.4/QUIC 2, with no changes but the cipher specifications, but it can happen in two or three years. Certificates themselves don't last longer than a year anyway. Corporations running ancient software that doesn't support PQ TLS will have the same co…

No need for a TLS 1.4.

Leaf certificates don't last long, but root CAs do. An attacker can just mint new certs from a broken root key.

Hopefully many devices can be upgraded to PQ security with a firmware update. Worse than not receiving updates, is receiving malicious firmware updates, which you can't really prevent without upgrading to something safe first.

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