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

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: Not Hard

[thesupraman]

Ffs..

So.. You will personally go and visit each and every web site you want to access privately?
Physically visit every inline store you want to deal with?
Then secure all that data carefully! Remember.. If anyone gets a copy.. All security is give.. At either end!

You need to think about things for more than 30 seconds.

Or perhaps you should accept that armchair 'experts' like you who think this is so easy are actually a big part of the problem?

Good crypto is hard.. QC proof crypto will be harder.. Such is life.
The major historical mistake to avoid is over complex 'standards' that are therefore never implemented or used correctly (I am looking at you ipsec..)

Post Quantum Cryptography

[1 a bee]

Here's a good wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... summarizing the known approaches. Interestingly, most symmetric encryption schemes seem to be secure (you just need to increase the key size apparently): it's the public/private schemes that are in trouble.

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.

Re: Oxy-morons

[Dutch Gun]

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.

And oops! It's no longer a one-time pad. As soon as you start using an algorithm, by its very nature, you're now leaking a very slight amount of information, because the output is no longer actually random either. This exactly why a one-time pad isn't practical for most applications. It's only effective if it's the same length as the message being encrypted. Any attempt to "cheat" and you compromise the encryption integrity.

Besides, modern ciphers actually DO use true random numbers to generate the initial symmetric keys, typically using Diffie-Hellman key exchange, in which it's impossible for anyone to intercept the key even if they listen to the entire exchange. So you might as well skip the one-time pad, and you get the exact same effect.

Re:D-Wave can't run Shor's algorithm, but...

[cryptizard]

The reason the D-Wave doesn't "break" RSA is that it can only do quantum annealing, which as you say is basically a search algorithm. It does not give exponential increases in efficiency like a theoretical "complete" quantum processor would. For instance, using Shor's algorithm one can factor an N bit number in time something like O(log^2 N), compared to the best algorithm on a classical computer which is something like O(N^(1/3)). In the best case, quantum annealing allows one to do a search which would normally take O(N) time on a classical computer instead in O(sqrt(N)) = O(N^(1/2)). It does not break any "complexity barriers" like a real quantum computer would, just lets you solve certain problems a bit faster.

This is a really big increase in efficiency, say going from a month worth of computation to solve a problem down to just an hour. But it is not anywhere near enough to break factoring since it would hypothetically take thousands of years to break on a classical computer. In fact, the best classical algorithm is actually slightly faster than quantum annealing because we happen to know that factoring is a problem that requires sub-exponential time to solve, O(N^(1/3)) on a classical computer vs O(N^(1/2)) on a D-Wave.