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Since how long it's going to take to have a potent Shor's algorithm machine is mostly a matter of when and in what series a set of novel advances occur in a ran

Since how long it's going to take to have a potent Shor's algorithm machine is mostly a matter of when and in what series a set of novel advances occur in a range of fields (physics and mathematics at least), there's a lot of uncertainty as to when that ball is going to drop. Given that, and how long it takes to get rid of legacy crypto even when we know it's dead as a doornail, and how long it takes to vet a cryptographic algorithm, I think there's no time like the present to get started on post-quantum crypto.

PhantomGremlin 10y ago
there's no time like the present to get started on post-quantum crypto You present an interesting argument. HOWEVER, the cynic in me questions why the NSA made similar arguments not too long ago. Is it because if everyone switches to new algorithms there will be myriad new code, with a plethora of new bugs? Won't it make NSA's life much much easier for years to come? How many years did it take us to find "goto fail; goto fail;"?
- johncolanduoni 10y ago
  Nobody is arguing switching production systems to the new algorithms anytime remotely soon. The closest I've heard of is Google adding a mixed ECC/post-quantum crypto algorithm in Chrome's Canary (bleeding edge channel)[1], but the whole point of the construction is that you need to break both (or break XOR, I guess :P). As far as I can tell, we're still in the early "is this algorithm any good" stage as opposed to the "did we implement the algorithm right" stage. More generally, its pretty easy to turn any security recommendation by the NSA into a plot (they recommend SHA-3 cause they broke it and not SHA-2!). I'd save my suspicion for cases where they (a) give advice contrary to independent experts or (b) give strangely specific guidance with no apparent rationale. [1]: https://security.googleblog.com/2016/07/experimenting-with-post-quantum.html https://security.googleblog.com/2016/07/experimenting-with-p...

PhantomGremlin 10y ago

there's no time like the present to get started on post-quantum crypto You present an interesting argument. HOWEVER, the cynic in me questions why the NSA made similar arguments not too long ago. Is it because if everyone switches to new algorithms there will be myriad new code, with a plethora of new bugs? Won't it make NSA's life much much easier for years to come? How many years did it take us to find "goto fail; goto fail;"?

johncolanduoni 10y ago
Nobody is arguing switching production systems to the new algorithms anytime remotely soon. The closest I've heard of is Google adding a mixed ECC/post-quantum crypto algorithm in Chrome's Canary (bleeding edge channel)[1], but the whole point of the construction is that you need to break both (or break XOR, I guess :P). As far as I can tell, we're still in the early "is this algorithm any good" stage as opposed to the "did we implement the algorithm right" stage. More generally, its pretty easy to turn any security recommendation by the NSA into a plot (they recommend SHA-3 cause they broke it and not SHA-2!). I'd save my suspicion for cases where they (a) give advice contrary to independent experts or (b) give strangely specific guidance with no apparent rationale. [1]: https://security.googleblog.com/2016/07/experimenting-with-post-quantum.html https://security.googleblog.com/2016/07/experimenting-with-p...