Thanks for that link - this whole story is massively overblown clickbait.
Comment on Mathematician warns NSA may be weakening next-gen encryption
redcalcium@lemmy.institute 11 months ago
Daniel Bernstein (djb) is a well known and respected cryptography researcher so his claim carries a lot of weight. It’s also worth noting that NIST didn’t invent these post quantum encryption algorithm. Instead, they run a competition and select a winner. Djb’s algorithm got a second place, so people were wondering if he’s just being salty about it, though if NIST were really compromised, it’s not hard to imagine they’ll select a weaker algorithm as the winner instead. NIST has posted a response which might be worth a read.
atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 11 months ago
The second link has replies that even say the OPs link contains conspiracy theory. The discussion there is better than all else, IMO.
atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Yeah - at the very list it shows that this is more “reasonable people disagreeing about a detail” than it is “OMG THE NSA IS DESTROYING CRYPTO!”
fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 11 months ago
I mean, DJB does mention NSA has more involvement over NIST than he expected, but that also doesn’t mean their would be collaboration.
In my non-expert reading, NIST made it seem better than it was, DJB disagreed but overestimated how bad it was, and NIST “sort of” said “yea OK we may have bragged.”
Either way, DJB is right to call out something being weaker than it should be. False confidence in encryption is about the worse thing that could happen in the digital age.
heeplr@feddit.de 11 months ago
They did it before and they’ll do it again.