5 ms·

Are there materials that show a ten year head start?

ReidZB 7y ago
I think there's skepticism in the community that NSA et al actually have such a far head-start now. That said, historically speaking, back in the early 70s DES was being designed. The NSA made some unjustified changes to its S-boxes. At the time, there were allegations that they had made them intentionally weaker. (Or so I've read; I wasn't born yet.) In the early 90s, differential cryptanalysis was discovered for the first time, and it turns out that DES was already resistant to it (unlike other block ciphers at the time): in fact, the NSA already knew about differential cryptanalysis, 20 years ahead of the general public, and intentionally strengthened DES. (Also, IBM discovered it, too, but kept it quiet at the NSA's request.)
PeterisP 7y ago
For an early example, differential cryptanalysis methods were 'discovered' in late 1980s by Biham and Shamir; but it later turned out that resistance to it was pushed as a design consideration already back in 1974 when DES was designed, so NSA knew of it at least then, that's more than a decade. We know that British intelligence (who don't have as much resources as NSA) had developed the RSA equivalent something like 5 years before Rivest/Shamir/Adleman got to it; and we still have no idea how far NSA was with that math at the time - all we have is circumstancial evidence such as travel reports of NSA representatives going to cryptography conferences and being satisfied that absolutely no math that's new (to them) or even potentially leading to something new was being revealed there. We also have NSA suddenly changing recommendations to use/stop using certain cryptosystems that still doesn't make sufficient sense - e.g. the 2015 turning away from 'suite B' ECC may have been due to some quantum discovery as is claimed, or some other weakness being found, but it's been five years and we (as far as I understand) still don't know as much as they did back in 2015, so they're more than 5 years ahead. But to know whether the current advantage is ten years or more or less, we'll have to wait a generation or so, it takes a long time for truth to leak.
- thesabreslicer 7y ago
  This is a great summary, thank you!
- whatshisface 7y ago
  How many mathematicians are working for NSA? How many public research cryptographers are there?
  - PeterisP 7y ago
    One thing is that proper public cryptographers are very rare, there's a handful of effective teams - e.g. MIT has Rivest and associates, there are a bunch of other places, but most universities, including quite serious ones, don't have anyone doing reasonable cryptographic research. Cryptocurrencies caused a recent boom, but it's a niche with separate, specific goals that doesn't advance the rest of the field much. It's hard to give good numbers, we'd have to look at Snowden leaks and others, but I haven't done much about that. Here's an earlier HN comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6338094 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6338094 that estimates 600 proper mathemathic researchers working on crypto, and it seems quite plausible to me that it would be more research power than the entire public academia - especially because in many countries who do take this field seriously (e.g. China, Russia, Iran) there's no real public research in crypto happening because that's classified by default. I mean, prety much all academic research happens through targeted grants by governments, and who other than deparment of defence (or similar organizations in other countries) would be funding cryptographic research? Also, I'll quote Bruce Shneier (2013, https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2013/09/how_advanced_is_the.html https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2013/09/how_advance...) regarding their budget - "According to the black budget summary, 35,000 people and $11 billion annually are part of the Department of Defense-wide Consolidated Cryptologic Program. Of that, 4 percent—or $440 million—goes to 'Research and Technology.' That's an enormous amount of money; probably more than everyone else on the planet spends on cryptography research put together."
- ljhsiung 7y ago
  This is fascinating; are there any readings/sources for similar events, i.e. governments "predicting" academia? I am aware of the 2015 plan to "transition soon(tm)", but that's because I was alive 5 years ago. Other earlier events would be super cool to read up on.

I think there's skepticism in the community that NSA et al actually have such a far head-start now. That said, historically speaking, back in the early 70s DES was being designed. The NSA made some unjustified changes to its S-boxes. At the time, there were allegations that they had made them intentionally weaker. (Or so I've read; I wasn't born yet.) In the early 90s, differential cryptanalysis was discovered for the first time, and it turns out that DES was already resistant to it (unlike other block ciphers at the time): in fact, the NSA already knew about differential cryptanalysis, 20 years ahead of the general public, and intentionally strengthened DES. (Also, IBM discovered it, too, but kept it quiet at the NSA's request.)

PeterisP 7y ago

For an early example, differential cryptanalysis methods were 'discovered' in late 1980s by Biham and Shamir; but it later turned out that resistance to it was pushed as a design consideration already back in 1974 when DES was designed, so NSA knew of it at least then, that's more than a decade. We know that British intelligence (who don't have as much resources as NSA) had developed the RSA equivalent something like 5 years before Rivest/Shamir/Adleman got to it; and we still have no idea how far NSA was with that math at the time - all we have is circumstancial evidence such as travel reports of NSA representatives going to cryptography conferences and being satisfied that absolutely no math that's new (to them) or even potentially leading to something new was being revealed there. We also have NSA suddenly changing recommendations to use/stop using certain cryptosystems that still doesn't make sufficient sense - e.g. the 2015 turning away from 'suite B' ECC may have been due to some quantum discovery as is claimed, or some other weakness being found, but it's been five years and we (as far as I understand) still don't know as much as they did back in 2015, so they're more than 5 years ahead. But to know whether the current advantage is ten years or more or less, we'll have to wait a generation or so, it takes a long time for truth to leak.

thesabreslicer 7y ago
This is a great summary, thank you!
whatshisface 7y ago
How many mathematicians are working for NSA? How many public research cryptographers are there?
- PeterisP 7y ago
  One thing is that proper public cryptographers are very rare, there's a handful of effective teams - e.g. MIT has Rivest and associates, there are a bunch of other places, but most universities, including quite serious ones, don't have anyone doing reasonable cryptographic research. Cryptocurrencies caused a recent boom, but it's a niche with separate, specific goals that doesn't advance the rest of the field much. It's hard to give good numbers, we'd have to look at Snowden leaks and others, but I haven't done much about that. Here's an earlier HN comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6338094 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6338094 that estimates 600 proper mathemathic researchers working on crypto, and it seems quite plausible to me that it would be more research power than the entire public academia - especially because in many countries who do take this field seriously (e.g. China, Russia, Iran) there's no real public research in crypto happening because that's classified by default. I mean, prety much all academic research happens through targeted grants by governments, and who other than deparment of defence (or similar organizations in other countries) would be funding cryptographic research? Also, I'll quote Bruce Shneier (2013, https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2013/09/how_advanced_is_the.html https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2013/09/how_advance...) regarding their budget - "According to the black budget summary, 35,000 people and $11 billion annually are part of the Department of Defense-wide Consolidated Cryptologic Program. Of that, 4 percent—or $440 million—goes to 'Research and Technology.' That's an enormous amount of money; probably more than everyone else on the planet spends on cryptography research put together."
ljhsiung 7y ago
This is fascinating; are there any readings/sources for similar events, i.e. governments "predicting" academia? I am aware of the 2015 plan to "transition soon(tm)", but that's because I was alive 5 years ago. Other earlier events would be super cool to read up on.