NIST Asks Public For Help With Quantum-Proof Cryptography (securityledger.com)

chicksdaddy quotes a report from The Security Ledger: With functional, quantum computers on the (distant?) horizon, The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is asking the public for help heading off what it calls "a looming threat to information security:" powerful quantum computers capable of breaking even the strongest encryption codes used to protect the privacy of digital information. In a statement Tuesday, NIST asked the public to submit ideas for "post-quantum cryptography" algorithms that will be "less susceptible to a quantum computer's attack." NIST formally announced its quest in a publication on The Federal Register. Dustin Moody, a mathematician at NIST said the Institute's main focus is developing new public key cryptography algorithms, which are used today to protect both stored and transmitted information. "We're looking to replace three NIST cryptographic standards and guidelines that would be the most vulnerable to quantum computers," Moody said. They are FIPS 186-4, NIST SP 800-56A and NIST SP 800-56B. Researchers have until November, 2017 to submit their ideas. After the deadline, NIST will review the submissions. Proposals that meet the "post-quantum crypto" standards set up by NIST will be invited to present their algorithms at an open workshop in early 2018.

Comments

Not Hard

[SeattleLawGuy]

This is a bad idea. We're in a weapons race, and so long as we keep playing the game, successive generations of crypto will be subject to attack. We need an end-run around the problem, which means changing how we think about encryption and data security.

Encryption should begin with a physical exchange of one-time pads. If you open a bank account, you should get a key to it. The key is an exhaustible one-time pad you use to encrypt transmissions to and from the bank. You plug it into a machine which runs packets through it.

Post backdoor

[Anonymous Coward]

NIST are hardly credible at this point, they previously were involved in the Dual EC fake random number generator, and now they're an agency under the Executive of Russian puppet leader, Trump. No credibility, means no trust.

FBI has demanded backdoors, Trump has said he'll give them their backdoors. NIST are the backdoor implementers.

Re:Post backdoor

[skids]

One should not trust NIST, but that doesn't stop NIST from providing a forum where trustworthy theoreticians can spar, and that's a helpful thing for them to do. It's not like they are entirely evil, just their decisions should not be trusted, but rather reviewed by the cryptomath community and either endorsed or criticized.

Basically any government entity is going to be torn between wanting to break crypto (for cointel) and wanting to use it (for their own security or for the fact that it is pretty damn essential to a continuing economy.) They'll do some good things, and they'll do some bad things, but at least they'll do something, rather than just sitting on their hands.

Re: Oxy-morons

[davidwr]

How does it handle counterfeit or lost messages? Not so well, I bet. Why would I want to spend more time securely obtaining one time pads than actually communicating?

I think it would work like this:

You go to your bank to open an account. While you are filling out paperwork and supplying a thumb-print (thank you 9/11 terrorist - NOT!) the bank generates a very long one-time pad that should provide enough coverage for several year's worth of communications. They keep a copy and they give you a copy. The pad is probably signed with the bank's public key so you know it is really from the bank.

To detect lost messages, every communication will include either an index into the one-time pad (in cleartext or encrypted with some other method) or a pre-determined "synchronization phrase" encrypted with the pad. If it includes the index, then the problem is solved. If it includes a "synchronization phrase" then you start with where the pad left off. If it doesn't match, then you read forward in the pad until it matches, and you know you probably lost a message somewhere along the line.

Also, the pad may be, in effect, two pads: one for sending, one for receiving. This is easly accomplished by having one party start at the beginning of the pad working forwards and the other party start at the end working backwards.

Also, to avoid pad exhaustion, the pad would probably be used to generate temporary/ephemeral symmetric keys and for some other things like the initial setup of the communication. The actual "meat" of the communication would be encrypted with the ephemeral, symmetric keys.