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From the email: "So I think that as a first step, no-encryption is better than using Speck." Thats a damned near heretical position to take as a cryptographer
by nimbius 8y ago
From the email:
"So I think that as a first step, no-encryption is better than using Speck."
Thats a damned near heretical position to take as a cryptographer, but Tomer did his homework and has done nothing less than nailed his 95 theses to the door of the church of the NSA. ISO is passing on Speck for a very good reason: The NSA still believes it can cash its unapproachable arrogance with Speck in a shroud of paternal intellectualism that Edward Snowden ripped the mask off years ago. The NSA forgets itself. The ISO WG2 is headed by no less than Berenstein and Paillier. They are not the fucking peanut gallery to be fecklessly dismissed with bureaucratic elucidations such as "i will not answer that question."
- _hl_ 8y agoI'm normally not the type to embark on wild conspiracy theories, but in this case I don't think the NSA actually believed it could push Speck into the ISO. The way Tomer depicts it, it sounds as if they almost wanted the process to fail; they made it a point to behave especially shadily. Perhaps, and here begins my wildy unfounded speculation, perhaps Speck was an attempt at setting a carefully crafted example of how the NSA pushes a compromised algorithm in an attempt to lower the expectations of shady NSA operations - thus making their next, real attempt more credible. But who knows.
- api 8y agoPossible but unlikely. Bureaucracies generally aren't that subtile. It is a good idea to be paranoid in crypto though. If I thought my adversary would be a nation state or anything else so powerful I would take a defense in depth approach of layering multiple independently developed systems using different algorithms and constructions.