there are no meaningful questions. The only way there are meaningful questions is if you think global cryptographers + governments are part of a cabal to build insecure schemes. The new schemes use
1. cryptography developed across the world,
2. the actual schemes were overwhelmingly by European authors
3. standardized by the US
4. other countries standardizations have been substantially similar (e.g. the ongoing Korean one, the German BSI's recommendations. China's CACR [had one with substantially similar schemes](https://www.sdxcentral.com/analysis/china-russia-to-adopt-sl...). Note that this is separate from a "standardization", which sounds like it is starting soon).
In particular, given that China + the US ended up with (essentially the same) underlying math, you'd have to have a very weird hypothetical scenario for the conclusion to not be "these seem secure", and instead "there is a global cabal pushing insecure schemes".
There are not in fact meaningful questions about whether the settled-on PQC constructions are secure, in the sense of "within the bounds of our current understanding of QC".
Didn't one of the PQC candidates get found to have a fatal classical vulnerability? Are we confident we won't find any future oopsies like that with the current PQC candidates?
The whole point of the competition is to see if anybody can cryptanalyze the contestants. I think part of what's happening here is that people have put all PQC constructions in bucket, as if they shared an underlying technology or theory, so that a break in one calls all of them into question. That is in fact not at all the case. PQC is not a "kind" of cryptography. It's a functional attribute of many different kinds of cryptography.
The algorithm everyone tends to be thinking of when they bring this up has literally nothing to do with any cryptography used anywhere ever; it was wildly novel, and it was interesting only because it (1) had really nice ergonomics and (2) failed spectacularly.
Yeah I get that, what I am really asking is that I know in my field, I can quickly get a vibe as to whether certain new work is good or not so good, and where any bugaboos are likely to be. For those who know PQC like I know economics, do they believe at this point that the algorithms have been analyzed successfully to a level comparable to DH or RSA? Or is this really gonna be a rush job under the gun because we have no choice?
Lattice cryptography was a contender alongside curves as a successor to RSA. It's not new. The specific lattice constructions we looked at during NIST PQC were new iterations on it, but so was Curve25519 when it was introduced. It's extremely not a rush job.
The elephant in the room in these conversations is Daniel Bernstein and the shade he has been casting on MLKEM for the last few years. The things I think you should remember about that particular elephant are (1) that he's cited SIDH as a reason to be suspicious of MLKEM, which indicates that he thinks you're an idiot, and (2) that he himself participated in the NIST PQC KEM contest with a lattice construction.
It's the same situation with classical encryption. It's not uncommon for a candidate algorithm [to be discovered ] to be broken during the selection process.
Why don't you go ahead and pick out the attacks in here that you think are relevant to this conversation? It can't be on me to do that, because obviously my subtext is that none of them are.
they're almost assuredly talking about two things (maybe 3 if they really know what they're talking about, but the third is something that people making this argument like to pretend doesn't exist).
1. the main "eye catching" attack was the [attack on SIDH](https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/975.pdf). it was very much a "thought to be entirely secure" to "broken in 5 minutes with a Sage (python variant) implementation" within ~1 week. Degradation from "thought to be (sub-)exp time" to "poly time". very bad.
2. the other main other "big break" was the [RAINBOW attack](https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/214.pdf). this was a big attack, but it did not break all parameter sets, e.g. it didn't suddenly reduce a problem from exp-time to poly-time. instead, it was a (large) speedup for existing attacks.
anyway, someone popular among some people in tech (the cryptographer Dan Bernstein) has been trying (successfully) to slow the PQC transition for ~10 years. His strategy throughout has been complaining that a very particular class of scheme ("structured LWE-based schemes") are suspect. He has had several complaints that have shifted throughout the years (galois automorphism structure for a while, then whatever his "spherical models" stuff was lmao). There have been no appreciable better attacks (nothing like the above) on them since then. But he still complains, saying that instead people should use
1. NTRU, a separate structured lattice scheme (that he coincidentally submitted a scheme for standardization with). Incidentally, it had [a very bad attack](https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/127) ~ 2016. Didn't kill PQC, but killed a broad class of other schemes (NTRU-based fully homomorphic encryption, at least using tensor-based multiplication)
2. McCliece, a scheme from the late 70s (that has horrendously large public keys --- people avoid it for a reason). He also submitted a version of this for standardization. It also had a [greatly improved attack recently](https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/1193).
Of course, none of those are relevant to improved attacks on the math behind ML-KEM (algebraically structured variants on ring LWE). there have been some progress on these, but not really. It's really just "shaving bits", e.g. going from 2^140 to 2^135 type things. The rainbow attack (of the first two, the "mild" one) reduced things by a factor ~2^50, which is clearly unacceptable.
Unfortunately, because adherents of Dan Bernstein will pop up, and start saying a bunch of stuff confidently that is much too annoying to refute, as they have no clue what the actual conversation is. So the conversation becomes
1. people who know things, who tend to not bother saying anything (with rare exceptions), and
2. people who parrot Dan's (very wrong at this point honestly, but they've shifted over time, so it's more of 'wrong' and 'unwilling to admit it was wrong') opinions.
the dynamic is similar to how when discussions of vaccines on the internet occur, many medical professionals may not bother engaging, so you'll get a bunch of insane anti-vax conspiracies spread.
there are no meaningful questions. The only way there are meaningful questions is if you think global cryptographers + governments are part of a cabal to build insecure schemes. The new schemes use
1. cryptography developed across the world, 2. the actual schemes were overwhelmingly by European authors 3. standardized by the US 4. other countries standardizations have been substantially similar (e.g. the ongoing Korean one, the German BSI's recommendations. China's CACR [had one with substantially similar schemes](https://www.sdxcentral.com/analysis/china-russia-to-adopt-sl...). Note that this is separate from a "standardization", which sounds like it is starting soon).
In particular, given that China + the US ended up with (essentially the same) underlying math, you'd have to have a very weird hypothetical scenario for the conclusion to not be "these seem secure", and instead "there is a global cabal pushing insecure schemes".
There are not in fact meaningful questions about whether the settled-on PQC constructions are secure, in the sense of "within the bounds of our current understanding of QC".
Didn't one of the PQC candidates get found to have a fatal classical vulnerability? Are we confident we won't find any future oopsies like that with the current PQC candidates?
The whole point of the competition is to see if anybody can cryptanalyze the contestants. I think part of what's happening here is that people have put all PQC constructions in bucket, as if they shared an underlying technology or theory, so that a break in one calls all of them into question. That is in fact not at all the case. PQC is not a "kind" of cryptography. It's a functional attribute of many different kinds of cryptography.
The algorithm everyone tends to be thinking of when they bring this up has literally nothing to do with any cryptography used anywhere ever; it was wildly novel, and it was interesting only because it (1) had really nice ergonomics and (2) failed spectacularly.
Yeah I get that, what I am really asking is that I know in my field, I can quickly get a vibe as to whether certain new work is good or not so good, and where any bugaboos are likely to be. For those who know PQC like I know economics, do they believe at this point that the algorithms have been analyzed successfully to a level comparable to DH or RSA? Or is this really gonna be a rush job under the gun because we have no choice?
Lattice cryptography was a contender alongside curves as a successor to RSA. It's not new. The specific lattice constructions we looked at during NIST PQC were new iterations on it, but so was Curve25519 when it was introduced. It's extremely not a rush job.
The elephant in the room in these conversations is Daniel Bernstein and the shade he has been casting on MLKEM for the last few years. The things I think you should remember about that particular elephant are (1) that he's cited SIDH as a reason to be suspicious of MLKEM, which indicates that he thinks you're an idiot, and (2) that he himself participated in the NIST PQC KEM contest with a lattice construction.
It's the same situation with classical encryption. It's not uncommon for a candidate algorithm [to be discovered ] to be broken during the selection process.
tbf - since we still don't know if p != np, there are still questions about if the current algorithms are secure also.
Fair, but recently several PQ algorithms have been shown to in fact not be secure, with known attacks, so I wouldn’t equate them
Which PQ algorithms would you be referring to here?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIST_Post-Quantum_Cryptography... and search for "published attacks".
Why don't you go ahead and pick out the attacks in here that you think are relevant to this conversation? It can't be on me to do that, because obviously my subtext is that none of them are.
Interesting. I'd like to learn more about this - where can I find info about it?
they're almost assuredly talking about two things (maybe 3 if they really know what they're talking about, but the third is something that people making this argument like to pretend doesn't exist).
1. the main "eye catching" attack was the [attack on SIDH](https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/975.pdf). it was very much a "thought to be entirely secure" to "broken in 5 minutes with a Sage (python variant) implementation" within ~1 week. Degradation from "thought to be (sub-)exp time" to "poly time". very bad.
2. the other main other "big break" was the [RAINBOW attack](https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/214.pdf). this was a big attack, but it did not break all parameter sets, e.g. it didn't suddenly reduce a problem from exp-time to poly-time. instead, it was a (large) speedup for existing attacks.
anyway, someone popular among some people in tech (the cryptographer Dan Bernstein) has been trying (successfully) to slow the PQC transition for ~10 years. His strategy throughout has been complaining that a very particular class of scheme ("structured LWE-based schemes") are suspect. He has had several complaints that have shifted throughout the years (galois automorphism structure for a while, then whatever his "spherical models" stuff was lmao). There have been no appreciable better attacks (nothing like the above) on them since then. But he still complains, saying that instead people should use
1. NTRU, a separate structured lattice scheme (that he coincidentally submitted a scheme for standardization with). Incidentally, it had [a very bad attack](https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/127) ~ 2016. Didn't kill PQC, but killed a broad class of other schemes (NTRU-based fully homomorphic encryption, at least using tensor-based multiplication)
2. McCliece, a scheme from the late 70s (that has horrendously large public keys --- people avoid it for a reason). He also submitted a version of this for standardization. It also had a [greatly improved attack recently](https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/1193).
Of course, none of those are relevant to improved attacks on the math behind ML-KEM (algebraically structured variants on ring LWE). there have been some progress on these, but not really. It's really just "shaving bits", e.g. going from 2^140 to 2^135 type things. The rainbow attack (of the first two, the "mild" one) reduced things by a factor ~2^50, which is clearly unacceptable.
Unfortunately, because adherents of Dan Bernstein will pop up, and start saying a bunch of stuff confidently that is much too annoying to refute, as they have no clue what the actual conversation is. So the conversation becomes
1. people who know things, who tend to not bother saying anything (with rare exceptions), and 2. people who parrot Dan's (very wrong at this point honestly, but they've shifted over time, so it's more of 'wrong' and 'unwilling to admit it was wrong') opinions.
the dynamic is similar to how when discussions of vaccines on the internet occur, many medical professionals may not bother engaging, so you'll get a bunch of insane anti-vax conspiracies spread.
For whatever it's worth I think I cosign all of this.