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There are other means of backdooring rather than setting key size. I'm not saying its a good idea, but there are means to make cryptosystems that are breakable

There are other means of backdooring rather than setting key size. I'm not saying its a good idea, but there are means to make cryptosystems that are breakable by the NSA but not anyone else. Consider the concerns around the Dual_EC random number generator that was pushed by the NSA. People believe that the NSA has a backdoor into that random number generator due to how the constants were generated. There are similar concerns for various ECC curves. So the government could mandate that industry uses their specific RNG or specific ECC curves. Effectively giving them a backdoor that nobody else has. It's disingenuous to argue its a bad idea because its impossible to build. It's also a bad argument strategy, as once someone learns that it can be built they will assume that you're lying to push your agenda and not trust further arguments you put forward.

UncleEntity 7y ago
> Effectively giving them a backdoor that nobody else has. Until they do...then you go from 100% to 0% as TFA states. All it takes is someone figuring out how the NSA generated their magic constants (which obviously contain a flaw) and its game over.
- admax88q 7y ago
  Sure but that's not the argument that the article made. Thats an important point to discuss and there may be ways to mitigate the damage of such a compromise (multiple curves, per key escrow). The article made a ridiculous argument for why backdooring is "impossible". Presumably they made it to persuade laypeople but what they really did is misinform laypeople and set them up to be pushed to the other side when they find they've been lied to. Not to mention you're also fucked if an unintentional flaw is discovered in AES or similar. You still need to be able to upgrade you crypto in response to advances in the state of the art, or leakage of important secrets.
credit_guy 7y ago
> So the government could mandate that industry uses their specific RNG or specific ECC curves. Effectively giving them a backdoor that nobody else has. I guess you are advocating for security by obscurity here (security in this case being the security of the backdoor). Not so good. But here's an alternative. The government can mandate that each time you send an encrypted message, you send another encrypted copy. The first one uses your addressee's public key, the latter the NSA's public key. It's not particularly elegant, but it does the job. It's not 99% secure, it's 100% secure.
subjectsigma 7y ago
I don't know enough about crypto to know if specific curves would work, but why couldn't somebody just guess/leak the curve they're using and ruin the whole thing? What the Twitter post truly doesn't address is key escrow, which is still extremely dangerous but seemingly crypto-sound. It's not impossible to build the system just a really, really bad idea. >It's disingenuous to argue its a bad idea because its impossible to build. I think this is a really key point. I hate the idea of govt backdoors as much as anyone, but we shouldn't need to win by misleading, even with good intentions. People can understand that the government is trying to fuck them over without hand waving.

UncleEntity 7y ago

> Effectively giving them a backdoor that nobody else has. Until they do...then you go from 100% to 0% as TFA states. All it takes is someone figuring out how the NSA generated their magic constants (which obviously contain a flaw) and its game over.

admax88q 7y ago
Sure but that's not the argument that the article made. Thats an important point to discuss and there may be ways to mitigate the damage of such a compromise (multiple curves, per key escrow). The article made a ridiculous argument for why backdooring is "impossible". Presumably they made it to persuade laypeople but what they really did is misinform laypeople and set them up to be pushed to the other side when they find they've been lied to. Not to mention you're also fucked if an unintentional flaw is discovered in AES or similar. You still need to be able to upgrade you crypto in response to advances in the state of the art, or leakage of important secrets.

credit_guy 7y ago

> So the government could mandate that industry uses their specific RNG or specific ECC curves. Effectively giving them a backdoor that nobody else has. I guess you are advocating for security by obscurity here (security in this case being the security of the backdoor). Not so good. But here's an alternative. The government can mandate that each time you send an encrypted message, you send another encrypted copy. The first one uses your addressee's public key, the latter the NSA's public key. It's not particularly elegant, but it does the job. It's not 99% secure, it's 100% secure.

subjectsigma 7y ago

I don't know enough about crypto to know if specific curves would work, but why couldn't somebody just guess/leak the curve they're using and ruin the whole thing? What the Twitter post truly doesn't address is key escrow, which is still extremely dangerous but seemingly crypto-sound. It's not impossible to build the system just a really, really bad idea. >It's disingenuous to argue its a bad idea because its impossible to build. I think this is a really key point. I hate the idea of govt backdoors as much as anyone, but we shouldn't need to win by misleading, even with good intentions. People can understand that the government is trying to fuck them over without hand waving.