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Cloudflare targets 2029 for full post-quantum security

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Re: Cloudflare targets 2029 for full post-quantum security

#51
post #33
post #9

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

Among cryptography engineers there was a sharp vibe shift over the last 2 months; there are papers supporting that vibe shift, but there's also a rumor mill behind it too. The field has basically aligned fully in a way it hadn't before that this is an urgent concern. The simplest way to put it is that everyone's timeline for a real-world CRQC has shortened. Not everyone has the same timeline, but all those timelines…

> The field has basically aligned fully in a way it hadn't before that this is an urgent concern.

AKA “we want more funding.”

Re: Cloudflare targets 2029 for full post-quantum security

#52
post #20
post #9

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

Nothing has been broken yet, however data can be collected now and be cracked when the time comes, hence why there is a push.

Can a theoretical strong enough quantum computer break PFS?

Re: Cloudflare targets 2029 for full post-quantum security

#53
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 acc…

> one or more teams of researchers in the field going dark

If the intelligence community is going to nab the first team that has a quantum computing breakthrough, does it actually help the public to speed up research?

It seems like an arms race the public is destined to lose because the winning team will be subsumed no matter what.

Re: Cloudflare targets 2029 for full post-quantum security

#54
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…

There is no reason to not support non quantum safe algorithms for foreseeable future in the first place

Re: Cloudflare targets 2029 for full post-quantum security

#55
Along similar lines, Mozilla recently updated their recommended server-side TLS configuration to enable the X25519MLKEM768 post-quantum key exchange now that it's making it into actually-deployed software versions: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Server_Side_TLS At the same time they removed their "old client" compatibility profile as newer TLS libraries do not implement the necessary algorithms (or at least do not enable them by default) and slightly tweaked the "intermediate" compatibility profile to remove a fallback necessary for IE 11 on Windows 7 (now Windows 10 is the minimum compatible version for that profile).

Re: Cloudflare targets 2029 for full post-quantum security

#56
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mitigating harvest-now/decrypt-later attacks. Most likely the NSA or someone else is ahead of the game and already has a quantum computer. If the tech news rumors are to true the NSA has a facility in Utah that can gather large swaths of the internet and process the data.

This?: https://nsa.gov1.info/utah-data-center/

FYI this is a parody website. (in case it's not obvious)

Re: Cloudflare targets 2029 for full post-quantum security

#57
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47677483

I noticed this, too. valeriozen, can you explain what happened here? Context, two nearly identical comments from different users. hackerman70000 at 16:09 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47677483 : > Cloudflare pushing PQ by default is probably the single most impactful thing that can happen for adotpion. Most developers will never voluntarily migrate their TLS config. Making it the default at the CDN layer means…

They're using the same AI model?

Re: Cloudflare targets 2029 for full post-quantum security

#58
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing has been broken yet, however data can be collected now and be cracked when the time comes, hence why there is a push.

Can a theoretical strong enough quantum computer break PFS?

QC breaks perfect forward secrecy schemes using non-PQC algorithms, same as for non-PFS. PFS schemes typically use single-use ephemeral DH/ECDH key pairs for symmetric key exchange, separate from the long-term signing keys for authentication.

Re: Cloudflare targets 2029 for full post-quantum security

#59
post #50

Outside of the PQ algorithms not being as thoroughly vetted as others, is there any negatives to shifting algorithms? Like even if someone were to prove that quantum computing is a dud, is there any reason why we shouldn't be using this stuff anyway?

Post-quantum algorithms tend to be slower than existing elliptic curve algorithms and require more data to be exchanged to provide equivalent security against attacks run on non-quantum computers.

Re: Cloudflare targets 2029 for full post-quantum security

#60
post #35
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Which PQ algorithms would you be referring to here?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIST_Post-Quantum_Cryptography... and search for "published attacks".
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