Quantum computers may soon be able to crack encryption methods in use today, so plans are already under way to replace them with new, secure algorithms. Now it seems the US National Security Agency may be undermining that process
Daniel Bernstein at the University of Illinois Chicago says that the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is deliberately obscuring the level of involvement the US National Security Agency (NSA) has in developing new encryption standards for “post-quantum cryptography” (PQC). He also believes that NIST has made errors – either accidental or deliberate – in calculations describing the security of the new standards. NIST denies the claims.
“NIST isn’t following procedures designed to stop NSA from weakening PQC,” says Bernstein. “People choosing cryptographic standards should be transparently and verifiably following clear public rules so that we don’t need to worry about their motivations. NIST promised transparency and then claimed it had shown all its work, but that claim simply isn’t true.”
Also, is this the same Daniel Bernstein from the 95’ ruling?
The export of cryptography from the United States was controlled as a munition starting from the Cold War until recategorization in 1996, with further relaxation in the late 1990s.[6] In 1995, Bernstein brought the court case Bernstein v. United States. The ruling in the case declared that software was protected speech under the First Amendment, which contributed to regulatory changes reducing controls on encryption.[7] Bernstein was originally represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.[8] He later represented himself.[9]
WHAT THE FUCK? This guys a stone cold fuckin gangster!
At 24 he took the largest surveillance apparatus in history to court… and won! He even raw dogged it — representing himself for a portion of the trial.
Honestly, I think his communication here is fine. He’s probably going to offend some people at NIST, but it seems like he’s already tried the cooperative route and is now willing to burn some bridges to bring things to light.
It reads like he’s playing mathematics and not politics, which is exactly what you want from a cryptography researcher.
Sadly not new. The USA considers encryption to be a weapon of war (thanks Germany), so they do whatever they can to interfere with it. If you are making a new encryption scheme it will be illegal if the government doesn’t have an easy way to break it.
Edit: the guy that made pgp got in a stink with the government if memory serves they tried to bop him with something to do with itar.
I have a pet theory that a lot of our passionate “movements” that get us all angry and upset are only those movements that benefit someone powerful.
I see stuff like this and think, “well that’s another coin in that jar”
Like this should piss so many people off. Its something enough people know about. It’s something that you would think would have all kinds of groups up in arms about. Like ask any self respecting 2A enthusiasts if the government should keep skeleton key to every lock in their house.
it will be illegal if the government doesn’t have an easy way to break it
Aren’t there a lot of existing standards already can’t be broken easily (by anyone)? That’s why we have all these recent attempts to force backdoors into encrypted apps
Or is it just extra scrutiny if you’re trying to make a new one
I’m going to break things down a few levels. Disclaimer: I’m a nerd not a mathematician, so if anyone else can fix my errors that would be great.
Cryptography is a cat and mouse game. There is currently no “perfect solution” so that A and B can communicate and C has no way of cracking the communication at some point.
Cryptography is very complex for obvious reasons, but a lot of modern algorithms hinge on the time it takes to calculate prime numbers and test them against encrypted communication. Traditional PCs take an incredibly long time to calculate prime numbers.
Quantom PCs don’t. The way they operate makes them incredibly helpful for calculating primes, that’s why a lot of cryptographic algorithms will be in jeopardy once it is more widely implemented.
But back to your question. There are already rumors that NSA is using super fast traditional computers to calculate prime numbers and collect them in a database to make cracking traditional encryption easier.
The only thing I can think about with is is that for the NSA they are not moving quickly enough to catch up or they suspect any future quantum key encryption will thwart any attempts they made.
This would be in tandem with moves by the UK parliament to get a law going that implements backdoors in devices or apps (I assume that must be pushed by GCHQ?).
Personal opinion: encryption with a backdoor is ridiculous. The government likes to represent that they’re the only one to access those, but it only takes one savant 10yo interested in penetration testing or one rogue government employee for this backdoor to be used for malicious purposes. And it’s not like these ppl already exist.
So there was an extremely interesting CVE recently about TLS trust issues on Qualcomm modem firmware.
Astute observers have been asking why modem firmware is implementing TLS exchanges in the first place, leading many to speculate that the NSA was using TLS to authenticate their backdoor, and the keys got leaked.
They seem to have calmed that down in recent years, and rely on the dumb public to store all their secrets on readily accessible corporate servers.
The maths war is hard to win (bigger keys handle most of that), and I honestly doubt most current encryption can be beaten reliably even with quantum computing.
Ive never understood how the same crowd that spouts not your keys not your crypto would ever trust any password manager they havent personally read the source code for/compiled/self hosted.
Because the pop security YouTube crowd goes through great lengths to avoid these conversations which reveal the limits of their own knowledge and abilities. Because a YouTube channel which just says “you are vulnerable to state actors and should focus on protecting yourself from more benign threats” doesn’t generate as much traffic as shilling VPNs.
It’s because they don’t care about encryption when they can just side channel the endpoints. You can infer device state from observing EM emissions, and in theory observe keys being loaded into the registers under the right circumstances. This has been demonstrated conceptually many times over the past decade, using a wide variety of devices and methods.
Relevant bit for those that don’t click through:
Also, is this the same Daniel Bernstein from the 95’ ruling?
source; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_J._Bernstein
So highly reputable source with skin in the game thanks for the explanation.
WHAT THE FUCK? This guys a stone cold fuckin gangster!
At 24 he took the largest surveillance apparatus in history to court… and won! He even raw dogged it — representing himself for a portion of the trial.
He’s my hero!
It is indeed one and the same. This is the post that triggered this article (warning: it’s long and not well organized): https://blog.cr.yp.to/20231003-countcorrectly.html
Credit where credit is due, DJB is usually correct even if he could communicate it better.
Honestly, I think his communication here is fine. He’s probably going to offend some people at NIST, but it seems like he’s already tried the cooperative route and is now willing to burn some bridges to bring things to light.
It reads like he’s playing mathematics and not politics, which is exactly what you want from a cryptography researcher.
Sadly not new. The USA considers encryption to be a weapon of war (thanks Germany), so they do whatever they can to interfere with it. If you are making a new encryption scheme it will be illegal if the government doesn’t have an easy way to break it.
Edit: the guy that made pgp got in a stink with the government if memory serves they tried to bop him with something to do with itar.
I have a pet theory that a lot of our passionate “movements” that get us all angry and upset are only those movements that benefit someone powerful.
I see stuff like this and think, “well that’s another coin in that jar”
Like this should piss so many people off. Its something enough people know about. It’s something that you would think would have all kinds of groups up in arms about. Like ask any self respecting 2A enthusiasts if the government should keep skeleton key to every lock in their house.
But at least there is Daniel Bernstein
I, too, just finished watching Rabbithole.
Confused Kiefer Sutherland noises
Aren’t there a lot of existing standards already can’t be broken easily (by anyone)? That’s why we have all these recent attempts to force backdoors into encrypted apps
Or is it just extra scrutiny if you’re trying to make a new one
I’m going to break things down a few levels. Disclaimer: I’m a nerd not a mathematician, so if anyone else can fix my errors that would be great.
Cryptography is a cat and mouse game. There is currently no “perfect solution” so that A and B can communicate and C has no way of cracking the communication at some point.
Cryptography is very complex for obvious reasons, but a lot of modern algorithms hinge on the time it takes to calculate prime numbers and test them against encrypted communication. Traditional PCs take an incredibly long time to calculate prime numbers.
Quantom PCs don’t. The way they operate makes them incredibly helpful for calculating primes, that’s why a lot of cryptographic algorithms will be in jeopardy once it is more widely implemented.
But back to your question. There are already rumors that NSA is using super fast traditional computers to calculate prime numbers and collect them in a database to make cracking traditional encryption easier.
The only thing I can think about with is is that for the NSA they are not moving quickly enough to catch up or they suspect any future quantum key encryption will thwart any attempts they made.
This would be in tandem with moves by the UK parliament to get a law going that implements backdoors in devices or apps (I assume that must be pushed by GCHQ?).
Personal opinion: encryption with a backdoor is ridiculous. The government likes to represent that they’re the only one to access those, but it only takes one savant 10yo interested in penetration testing or one rogue government employee for this backdoor to be used for malicious purposes. And it’s not like these ppl already exist.
So there was an extremely interesting CVE recently about TLS trust issues on Qualcomm modem firmware.
Astute observers have been asking why modem firmware is implementing TLS exchanges in the first place, leading many to speculate that the NSA was using TLS to authenticate their backdoor, and the keys got leaked.
They seem to have calmed that down in recent years, and rely on the dumb public to store all their secrets on readily accessible corporate servers.
The maths war is hard to win (bigger keys handle most of that), and I honestly doubt most current encryption can be beaten reliably even with quantum computing.
Ive never understood how the same crowd that spouts not your keys not your crypto would ever trust any password manager they havent personally read the source code for/compiled/self hosted.
Not your server not your safe/secure password
Because the pop security YouTube crowd goes through great lengths to avoid these conversations which reveal the limits of their own knowledge and abilities. Because a YouTube channel which just says “you are vulnerable to state actors and should focus on protecting yourself from more benign threats” doesn’t generate as much traffic as shilling VPNs.
It’s because they don’t care about encryption when they can just side channel the endpoints. You can infer device state from observing EM emissions, and in theory observe keys being loaded into the registers under the right circumstances. This has been demonstrated conceptually many times over the past decade, using a wide variety of devices and methods.
Didn’t the same thing happen with TrueCrypt?
Bernstein’s website http://safecurves.cr.yp.to/index.html
Cool guy
And the same DJB behind most of the modern cryptography that all web browsers and other tools support today.