In August, National Security Agency officials advised US agencies and businesses to prepare for a not-too-distant time when the cryptography protecting virtually all sensitive government and business communications is rendered obsolete by quantum computing. The advisory recommended backing away from plans to deploy elliptic curve cryptography, a form of public key cryptography that the NSA spent the previous 20 years promoting as more secure than the older RSA cryptosystem.
Almost immediately, the dramatic about-face generated questions and anxiety. Why would the NSA abruptly abandon a series of ECC specifications it had championed for so long? Why were officials issuing the advice now when a working quantum computer was 10 to 50 years away, and why would they back away from ECC before recommending a suite of quantum-resistant alternatives? The fact that the NSA was continuing to endorse use of RSA, which is also vulnerable to quantum computing, led some observers to speculate there was a secret motivation that had nothing to do with quantum computing.
On Tuesday, researchers Neal Koblitz and Alfred J. Menezes published a paper titled A Riddle Wrapped in an Enigma that compiles some of the competing theories behind the August advisory. The researchers stressed that that their paper isn't academic and at times relies on unsourced facts and opinions. And sure enough, some of the theories sound almost conspiratorial. Still, the paper does a good job of evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the NSA's highly unexpected abandonment of ECC in a post quantum crypto (PQC) world.
"The PQC announcement suggests that NSA has no interest in this topic because it now views ECC as only a stopgap solution," the researchers wrote. "This caught many people by surprise, since it is widely believed that ECC will continue to be used extensively for at least another decade or two."..
http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/10/nsa-advisory-sparks-concern-of-secret-advance-ushering-in-cryptoapocalypse/
Showing posts with label Quantum Cryptography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Quantum Cryptography. Show all posts
20150920
A Tricky Path to Quantum-Safe Encryption
On August 11, the National Security Agency updated an obscure page on its website with an announcement that it plans to shift the encryption of government and military data away from current cryptographic schemes to new ones, yet to be determined, that can resist an attack by quantum computers.
“It is now clear that current Internet security measures and the cryptography behind them will not withstand the new computational capabilities that quantum computers will bring,” NSA spokesperson Vanee’ Vines stated in an email, confirming the change. “NSA’s mission to protect critical national security systems requires the agency to anticipate such developments.”
Quantum computers, once seen as a remote theoretical possibility, are now widely expected to work within five to 30 years. By exploiting the probabilistic rules of quantum physics, the devices could decrypt most of the world’s “secure” data, from NSA secrets to bank records to email passwords. Aware of this looming threat, cryptographers have been racing to develop “quantum-resistant” schemes efficient enough for widespread use.
The most promising schemes are believed to be those based on the mathematics of lattices — multidimensional, repeating grids of points. These schemes depend on how hard it is to find information that is hidden in a lattice with hundreds of spatial dimensions, unless you know the secret route.
But last October, cryptographers at the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Britain’s electronic surveillance agency, posted an enigmatic paper online that called into question the security of some of the most efficient lattice-based schemes. The findings hinted that vulnerabilities had crept in during a decade-long push for ever-greater efficiency. As cryptographers simplified the underlying lattices on which their schemes were based, they rendered the schemes more susceptible to attack...
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150908-quantum-safe-encryption/
But last October, cryptographers at the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Britain’s electronic surveillance agency, posted an enigmatic paper online that called into question the security of some of the most efficient lattice-based schemes. The findings hinted that vulnerabilities had crept in during a decade-long push for ever-greater efficiency. As cryptographers simplified the underlying lattices on which their schemes were based, they rendered the schemes more susceptible to attack...
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150908-quantum-safe-encryption/
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