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Does the IETF still take cryptographic advice from the NSA?

by NelsonMinar 9y ago

garmaine 9y ago
Yes. It’s also hard not to, given the revolving door and the incestous nature of the industry.
- QAPereo 9y ago
  Besides, just rejecting all of their advice makes you as easy to manipulate as following all of their advice.
  - garmaine 9y ago
    The alternative is ignore, not reject.
    - QAPereo 9y ago
      That’s a good point, true.
- yuhong 9y ago
  I like to mention how the NSA is funded by government debt in the current debt-based economy. Which basically means that the more it spends, the more dollars gets printed.
- tptacek 9y ago
  There is no "revolving door" between the industry and NSA, or really between the industry and any part of the USG. This is something you've made up.
  - garmaine 9y ago
    I actually work in this space, and yes it is often the case that you find people on standards bodies with prior experience at major government IT contractors with classified gaps in their CVs, and/or former private sector people who rotate into those same government contracting positions. These also tend to be the people making more ... weird ... proposals that are likely backdoors.
    - tptacek 9y ago
      Point to one of such proposal, and we'll look at the resume.
tptacek 9y ago
They've never formally taken cryptographic advice from the NSA. For a good long while, the chair of the IRTF CFRG was Kevin Igoe, who worked for NSA. CFRG is now chaired by Kenny Paterson, and has been for several years. Even during the Igoe years, IETF process is open; if IETF suffers from undue NSA influence, it's a consequence of people generally being too disengaged to push back on anything. IETF crypto work is particularly painful, as the noisiest people involved in the process are not, as a rule, the most crypto-literate. As always, it's worth remembering that at the time extended-random was standardized, nobody --- including cryptographers --- worried about exposing RNG output on the wire. If anything, we had the opposite concern, after the Debian fiasco. Extended-random is shady, and I now lean towards Matthew Green's take on it, but that comes from a much more recent perspective on this stuff.

Does the IETF still take cryptographic advice from the NSA?

garmaine 9y ago

Yes. It’s also hard not to, given the revolving door and the incestous nature of the industry.

QAPereo 9y ago
Besides, just rejecting all of their advice makes you as easy to manipulate as following all of their advice.
- garmaine 9y ago
  The alternative is ignore, not reject.
  - QAPereo 9y ago
    That’s a good point, true.
yuhong 9y ago
I like to mention how the NSA is funded by government debt in the current debt-based economy. Which basically means that the more it spends, the more dollars gets printed.
tptacek 9y ago
There is no "revolving door" between the industry and NSA, or really between the industry and any part of the USG. This is something you've made up.
- garmaine 9y ago
  I actually work in this space, and yes it is often the case that you find people on standards bodies with prior experience at major government IT contractors with classified gaps in their CVs, and/or former private sector people who rotate into those same government contracting positions. These also tend to be the people making more ... weird ... proposals that are likely backdoors.
  - tptacek 9y ago
    Point to one of such proposal, and we'll look at the resume.

tptacek 9y ago

They've never formally taken cryptographic advice from the NSA. For a good long while, the chair of the IRTF CFRG was Kevin Igoe, who worked for NSA. CFRG is now chaired by Kenny Paterson, and has been for several years. Even during the Igoe years, IETF process is open; if IETF suffers from undue NSA influence, it's a consequence of people generally being too disengaged to push back on anything. IETF crypto work is particularly painful, as the noisiest people involved in the process are not, as a rule, the most crypto-literate. As always, it's worth remembering that at the time extended-random was standardized, nobody --- including cryptographers --- worried about exposing RNG output on the wire. If anything, we had the opposite concern, after the Debian fiasco. Extended-random is shady, and I now lean towards Matthew Green's take on it, but that comes from a much more recent perspective on this stuff.