Mathematician warns US spies may be weakening next-gen encryption
Mathematician warns US spies may be weakening next-gen encryption
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
Relevant bit for those that don't click through:
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]
214So highly reputable source with skin in the game thanks for the explanation.
103WHAT 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!
66
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.
88Honestly, 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.
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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.
36I 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
17it 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
10They 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.
4Didn’t the same thing happen with TrueCrypt?
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Bernstein's website http://safecurves.cr.yp.to/index.html
8Cool guy
8
Interesting article and discussion.
The way Signal is addressing post-quantum encryption is by layering Crystals-KYBER over their current encryption. I initially thought it was overkill, but it's a great decision.
101There is np such thing as overkill while some governments actively funding quantum computing projects for the sole purpose of code cracking
14My phone has a Kyber crystal?! Awesome!
10
Without paywall
42How do you remove the paywall from the article? Just copy the URL of the article and provide it to archive.today, and that website just bypassed the paywall? How do they manage to bypass it? O.o
5They need the content to be available for Google indexing reasons, it can only really be blocked through the client.
A smart enough backend system can access/crawl/index it, just like Google can. And then make it available to the public without the front end annoyance.
14I dont think anyone will come to share this knowledge with us since it could be used by newspapers website to block the archiving.
4
Yeah you can observe this with letsencrypt failing to generate a certificate if you change the elliptic curve from an NSA generated curve to a generic/known safe one. Changing between different NSA curves are functionally fine. Forces all signed certificates to use curves that are known to have issues, deliberate or otherwise - i.e. backdoored.
34Can you elaborate on this? Which curves does it happen with? Is there some source that you’ve seen?
21That's worrying if true. However I couldn't find a source. Even if true Let's encrypt is probably the most secure option
8You can't use arbitrary curves with certificates, only those which are standardized because the CA will not implement anything which isn't unambiguously defined in a standard with support by clients.
8My point is that there is a documented listed of supported curves for ECDSA but attempting to use any other safe curve in the list results in a failure. I am not trying to use some arbitrary curve.
If your point is that no safe curve is permitted because the powers that be don't permit it, TLS is doomed.
https://eff-certbot.readthedocs.io/en/latest/using.html#using-ecdsa-keys
The default is a curve widely believed to be unsafe, p256, with no functioning safe alternative.
That's Bernstein's website if anyone was wondering, showing p256 is unsafe.
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I know someone in this field and sent him this article. He said the “NIST isn’t being transparent” claim isn’t true
https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=927303 https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ir/2020/NIST.IR.8309.pdf https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=934458
He also responded with “of course the NSA would try and mess with it, but if it’s peer reviewed properly I don’t see how they would be successful”
18We know for a fact that they have done it in the past and managed to hide it until it was too late, what makes you think they can't do it again?
51peer reviewed properly
Is the important bit here. The timeline from that Wikipedia article shows it was published in 2005 and work disproving it’s claim came around in 2006.
If a scientists work is retracted it really kills any more funding they receive. They use examples like the DRBG one as what not to be.
23Looking at the history of the any of the Clandestine US orgs should probably remind us these people will do literally anything that they can, like give people LSD in an attempt to control their mind, or put microphones in Russian cats.
12
but if it’s peer reviewed properly
Is it?
14Did you send him Bernstein's original blog post?
https://blog.cr.yp.to/20231003-countcorrectly.html
Unless he's just making all of this up, it does seem pretty damning. I would love to see an in-depth rebuttal.
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