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Comment by advisedwang

4 days ago

Clicking around I don't see any "nsa.gov" email addresses for the positions this site says are from the NSA. Have I just missed some things that are clearly from the NSA? If not, how would one know that these various academic and personal email addresses have some kind of NSA tie?

33 comments

advisedwang

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mswphd  4 days ago

DJB has for years claimed anyone who disagrees with him is affiliated with the NSA. See for example this post as part of the NIST-PQC competition

https://blog.cr.yp.to/20220805-nsa.html

> Some people seem to be unable to rationally consider the possibility that NSA is sabotaging post-quantum cryptography. I've heard people saying, for example, that submissions to the NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization Project (NISTPQC) were publicly designed and evaluated by top experts, and that NSA can't have bribed the submission teams. > > Let's look at the facts.

Note that the authors of ML-KEM are overwhelming European.

  • adrian_b  4 days ago

    DJB did not claim that there exists any weakness in ML-KEM or that NSA had anything to do with ML-KEM.

    He just pointed that the predecessor of ML-KEM (SIKE) has already been broken. Because ML-KEM is also very new, there is a non-negligible probability that it will also be broken in a few years.

    It is very simple to guard against this, by using both ML-KEM and the currently used elliptic-curve Diffie-Hellman algorithm.

    ML-KEM is much more expensive than the current algorithm, so using both does not increase much the cost.

    I do not see any flaw in his arguments, while anyone who says that ML-KEM should be used alone is making a bet for which there exists no justification, i.e. the risk is extremely high and the reward is extremely low.

    In cryptography bets must be done only when the odds are extremely favorable, which is not the case for the proposal criticized by DJB.

mcpherrinm  4 days ago

The underlying context is the US government only wants to buy systems which support pure post-quantum cryptography for use on top-secret networks, as part of the requirements of (via its Commercial National Security Algorithm Suite 2.0 standard).

So all the companies who want to sell anything using TLS to the government want to standardize this, so they can be CNSA2 compliant.

Everyone already supports this in major libraries; but some folks feel they need an IETF RFC specifying it.

(I don't have to comply with CNSA2 so I might have details slightly off)

  • adrian_b  4 days ago

    Do you have a citation for "only wants to buy systems which support pure post-quantum cryptography" ?

    Because this would seem pretty stupid, i.e. to disqualify something that supports both post-quantum algorithms and previous algorithms.

    I have looked just now at CNSA2 and it only says that post-quantum algorithms should be used exclusively for key exchange and digital signatures after 2033.

    So during this 7-year transition period it should be normal to use both post-quantum and classic algorithms, even based on what CNSA2 says.

    Moreover, even "exclusively" can be interpreted in various ways, i.e. it can also be interpreted that there should be no key exchanges/digital signatures that do not use post-quantum algorithms, but without forbidding them to also use other algorithms, because such a prohibition does not make sense.

iAMkenough  4 days ago

I don’t think the spy agency would use nsa.gov address to manipulate the technology trajectory.

  • mswphd  4 days ago

    this is literally what happened with previous NSA meddling though? Both DUAL_EC_DRBG and DES were done "officially" by the NSA.

    Additionally, the main authors behind ML-KEM are all european. The design of ML-KEM is "very boring", in the sense that it's essentially the scheme that most (lattice) cryptographers would have suggested. There were 2 other NIST PQC schemes that went very far (New Hope and Saber) that were essentially the same scheme (there were minor technical differences, but it's really not that big).

    • adrian_b  4 days ago

      DJB did not criticize anything about ML-KEM.

      The TFA has nothing to do with ML-KEM, but only about how to transition from the current algorithms to post-quantum algorithms.

      For now, it is completely unknown how secure ML-KEM really is, because it is too new. For many complex cryptographic algorithms a decade or even a few decades have been required until someone discovered how to break them. The predecessor of ML-KEM, SIKE, has already been broken. Perhaps nobody will break ML-KEM, or perhaps it will be broken in a couple of years.

      The only risk-free strategy is to use both ML-KEM and the current key exchange algorithm. This adds a negligible cost, because ML-KEM is much more expensive.

      Therefore I agree with DJB about this, because I never bet that the worst case will not happen. Any good design must work fine even when the worst happens.

      6 replies →

  • advisedwang  4 days ago

    Of course, but is there any actual evidence that these accounts are NSA related? Or is it an assumption because they are supporting the proposal (which would be very circular logic)

    • timschmidt  4 days ago

      There's a history and a 'pattern or practice' of behavior between NSA (sometimes using other TLAs or plausibly deniable intermediaries) and standards bodies and regulatory agencies.

      Demonstrating a 'pattern or practice' is the legal standard one has to meet to bust qualified immunity and shift the burden of doubt on to authorities, so I'd say it goes a fair amount past 'reasonable suspicion', which in a court is itself enough to issue search warrants.

axus  4 days ago

The inexplicable behavior is indistinguishable from behavior that could be explained by a conspiracy.