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> I believe the implication that NIST or NSA somehow bribed one of the PQC researchers to weaken a submission is risible. maybe you don't know what risible mea

> I believe the implication that NIST or NSA somehow bribed one of the PQC researchers to weaken a submission is risible. maybe you don't know what risible means, but it reads like you're saying that the NSA "somehow" coercing someone is unlikely, which i'm sure you can agree is a "very naive and trusting view"

tptacek 4y ago
No part of what I said had anything to do with what NSA would or wouldn't attempt to do. If you don't understand what I wrote, ask questions. What you did instead was leap to stupid conclusions.
- jona-f 4y ago
  You used obscure language to make yourself look smart and deal with the resulting confusion by calling people stupid instead of clarifying what was said. Please get your ego in order.
  - alariccole 4y ago
    The person is saying one thing then denying saying that thing and being a jerk about it. Either a bot or someone with a broken thesaurus. Glad you pointed it out because it’s ridiculous/risible.
    - kbenson 4y ago
      That person is very well known in this community, and in other communities as well. They are also known for making very specific arguments that people misinterpret and fight over, but the actual intent and literal meaning of the statements is most often correct (IMO). Whether this is a byproduct of trying to be exacting in the language used that tends to cause people interpretive problems or a specific tactic to expose those that are a combination of careless with their reading and willing to make assumptions rather than ask questions is unknown to me, but that doesn't change how it tends to play out, from my perspective. In this case, I'll throw you a bone and restate his position as I understand it. NIST ran the competition in question in a way such that all the judges referred each other, and all are very well known in the cryptographic field, and the suggestion by someone with more common game that they could be bribes in this manner (note not that the NSA would not attempt it, but the implication they would succeed with the people in question) is extremely unlikely, and that DJB would suggest as much knowing his fame may matter to people more than the facts of who these people are, is problematic.
      - tptacek 4y ago
        I'm not sure I'd use the same words, but yeah, the argument I'm refusing to dignify is that NSA could have been successful at bribing a member of one of the PQC teams. Like, what is that bribed person going to do? Look at the teams; they're ridiculously big. It doesn't even make sense. Again: part of my dismissiveness comes from how clear it is that Bernstein is counting on his cheering section not knowing any of this, even though it's a couple of Google searches away.
        throwaway654329 4y ago
        One trivial example implied by the blog post: Such corruption could be involved in the non-transparent decision making process at NIST. Regarding Dual_EC: we still lack a lot of information about how this decision was made internally at NIST. That’s a core point: transparency was promised in the wake of discovered sabotage and it hasn’t arrived.
        tptacek 4y ago
        What do you mean, "how" the decision about Dual EC was made? It's an NSA-designed backdoor. NIST standardized it because NSA told them to. I'm sure NSA told NIST a story about why it was important to standardize it. The Kremlinology isn't interesting: it is NSA's chartered job to break cryptography, and nobody should ever trust them; the only thing NSA can do to improve cryptography is to literally publish secret attacks, and they're not going to do that.
        throwaway654329 4y ago
        What do I mean? Iran-Contra, Watergate, or a 9/11 report style report, like levels of investigation. Given how widely read the BULLRUN stories were, it’s not credible to suggest the details aren’t important. The American people deserve to know who picked up the phone or held a meeting to make this happen. Who was present, who at NIST knew what, and so on. Who internally had objections and indeed who set the policy in the first place. What whistleblower protections were in place and why didn’t the IG have involvement in public? Why did we have to learn about this from Snowden? NSA has a dual mandate, on that I hope we can agree. It’s my understanding that part of their job is to secure things and that part of their job is to break stuff. NIST has no such dual mandate, heads should roll at NIST. We probably agree that NSA probably won’t be accountable in any meaningful sense, but NIST must be - we are stuck with them. Not trusting them isn’t an option for anyone who files their taxes or banks or does any number of other regulated activities that require using NIST standards.
  - dcow 4y ago
    He said bribed, which quite explicitly means payment made to a person in a position of trust to corrupt his judgment. Coerced is not bribed. Period.
    - smegsicle 4y ago
      a risible distinction- a cursory reading of the article will reveal that bribery was only brought forth as an example of coercion
      - dcow 4y ago
        Where? If you RTFA you'd know it pertains to bribery, not coercion.
        throwaway654329 4y ago
        To quote the article: At the risk of belaboring the obvious: An attacker won't have to say "Oops, researcher X is working in public and has just found an attack; can we suppress this somehow?" if the attacker had the common sense to hire X years earlier, meaning that X isn't working in public. People arguing that there can't be sabotage because submission teams can't be bribed are completely missing the point. He goes on to say: I coined the phrase "post-quantum cryptography" in 2003. It's not hard to imagine that the NSA/IDA post-quantum attack team was already hard at work before that, that they're years ahead of the public in finding attacks, and that NSA has been pushing NISTPQC to select algorithms that NSA secretly knows how to break. Does this seem unreasonable, and if so, why? He also remarks: Could such a weakness also be exploited by other large-scale attackers? Best bet is that the answer is yes. Would this possibility stop NSA from pushing for the weakness? Of course not. Doesn’t sound to me like he only has concerns about bribery. Corruption of the standards to NSA’s benefit is one overarching issue. It’s not the only one, he has concerns about non-American capabilities as well. The are many methods for the NSA to achieve a win. Ridiculing people for worrying about this is totally lame and is harmful to the community. To suggest a few dozen humans are beyond reproach from attack by the most powerful adversaries to ever exist is extremely naive at best. However that literally isn’t even a core point as Bernstein notes clearly.
dcow 4y ago
Nowhere does the comment say that the NSA "somehow" coercing someone is unlikely. Hence, it's fair question whether the comment had been comprehended, because it seems it hasn't in this thread. If comprehension begets intelligence than conclusions born from misunderstanding exude stupidity. And, dropping the pedantry, it's quite frustrating to be deliberately or casually or in whatever way misrepresented by drive-by commenters in an otherwise apt discussion thread. Your comment and the one tptacek responded to are patronizing and dismissive and really don't contribute to any interesting discourse on the topic. I think it's fair to dismiss stupid drive-by low-effort quips, personally.
escape_goat 4y ago
Maybe he does know what risible means and is in fact extremely well informed, much better informed than you are, to the point where offering sarcasm on the apparent basis of absolutely nothing but what you've learnt from the internet is actually not a valuable contribution to the conversation but instead embarrassing. Have you considered this possibility as well?

tptacek 4y ago

No part of what I said had anything to do with what NSA would or wouldn't attempt to do. If you don't understand what I wrote, ask questions. What you did instead was leap to stupid conclusions.

jona-f 4y ago
You used obscure language to make yourself look smart and deal with the resulting confusion by calling people stupid instead of clarifying what was said. Please get your ego in order.
- alariccole 4y ago
  The person is saying one thing then denying saying that thing and being a jerk about it. Either a bot or someone with a broken thesaurus. Glad you pointed it out because it’s ridiculous/risible.
  - kbenson 4y ago
    That person is very well known in this community, and in other communities as well. They are also known for making very specific arguments that people misinterpret and fight over, but the actual intent and literal meaning of the statements is most often correct (IMO). Whether this is a byproduct of trying to be exacting in the language used that tends to cause people interpretive problems or a specific tactic to expose those that are a combination of careless with their reading and willing to make assumptions rather than ask questions is unknown to me, but that doesn't change how it tends to play out, from my perspective. In this case, I'll throw you a bone and restate his position as I understand it. NIST ran the competition in question in a way such that all the judges referred each other, and all are very well known in the cryptographic field, and the suggestion by someone with more common game that they could be bribes in this manner (note not that the NSA would not attempt it, but the implication they would succeed with the people in question) is extremely unlikely, and that DJB would suggest as much knowing his fame may matter to people more than the facts of who these people are, is problematic.
    - tptacek 4y ago
      I'm not sure I'd use the same words, but yeah, the argument I'm refusing to dignify is that NSA could have been successful at bribing a member of one of the PQC teams. Like, what is that bribed person going to do? Look at the teams; they're ridiculously big. It doesn't even make sense. Again: part of my dismissiveness comes from how clear it is that Bernstein is counting on his cheering section not knowing any of this, even though it's a couple of Google searches away.
      - throwaway654329 4y ago
        One trivial example implied by the blog post: Such corruption could be involved in the non-transparent decision making process at NIST. Regarding Dual_EC: we still lack a lot of information about how this decision was made internally at NIST. That’s a core point: transparency was promised in the wake of discovered sabotage and it hasn’t arrived.
        tptacek 4y ago
        What do you mean, "how" the decision about Dual EC was made? It's an NSA-designed backdoor. NIST standardized it because NSA told them to. I'm sure NSA told NIST a story about why it was important to standardize it. The Kremlinology isn't interesting: it is NSA's chartered job to break cryptography, and nobody should ever trust them; the only thing NSA can do to improve cryptography is to literally publish secret attacks, and they're not going to do that.
        throwaway654329 4y ago
        What do I mean? Iran-Contra, Watergate, or a 9/11 report style report, like levels of investigation. Given how widely read the BULLRUN stories were, it’s not credible to suggest the details aren’t important. The American people deserve to know who picked up the phone or held a meeting to make this happen. Who was present, who at NIST knew what, and so on. Who internally had objections and indeed who set the policy in the first place. What whistleblower protections were in place and why didn’t the IG have involvement in public? Why did we have to learn about this from Snowden? NSA has a dual mandate, on that I hope we can agree. It’s my understanding that part of their job is to secure things and that part of their job is to break stuff. NIST has no such dual mandate, heads should roll at NIST. We probably agree that NSA probably won’t be accountable in any meaningful sense, but NIST must be - we are stuck with them. Not trusting them isn’t an option for anyone who files their taxes or banks or does any number of other regulated activities that require using NIST standards.
- dcow 4y ago
  He said bribed, which quite explicitly means payment made to a person in a position of trust to corrupt his judgment. Coerced is not bribed. Period.
  - smegsicle 4y ago
    a risible distinction- a cursory reading of the article will reveal that bribery was only brought forth as an example of coercion
    - dcow 4y ago
      Where? If you RTFA you'd know it pertains to bribery, not coercion.
      - throwaway654329 4y ago
        To quote the article: At the risk of belaboring the obvious: An attacker won't have to say "Oops, researcher X is working in public and has just found an attack; can we suppress this somehow?" if the attacker had the common sense to hire X years earlier, meaning that X isn't working in public. People arguing that there can't be sabotage because submission teams can't be bribed are completely missing the point. He goes on to say: I coined the phrase "post-quantum cryptography" in 2003. It's not hard to imagine that the NSA/IDA post-quantum attack team was already hard at work before that, that they're years ahead of the public in finding attacks, and that NSA has been pushing NISTPQC to select algorithms that NSA secretly knows how to break. Does this seem unreasonable, and if so, why? He also remarks: Could such a weakness also be exploited by other large-scale attackers? Best bet is that the answer is yes. Would this possibility stop NSA from pushing for the weakness? Of course not. Doesn’t sound to me like he only has concerns about bribery. Corruption of the standards to NSA’s benefit is one overarching issue. It’s not the only one, he has concerns about non-American capabilities as well. The are many methods for the NSA to achieve a win. Ridiculing people for worrying about this is totally lame and is harmful to the community. To suggest a few dozen humans are beyond reproach from attack by the most powerful adversaries to ever exist is extremely naive at best. However that literally isn’t even a core point as Bernstein notes clearly.

dcow 4y ago

Nowhere does the comment say that the NSA "somehow" coercing someone is unlikely. Hence, it's fair question whether the comment had been comprehended, because it seems it hasn't in this thread. If comprehension begets intelligence than conclusions born from misunderstanding exude stupidity. And, dropping the pedantry, it's quite frustrating to be deliberately or casually or in whatever way misrepresented by drive-by commenters in an otherwise apt discussion thread. Your comment and the one tptacek responded to are patronizing and dismissive and really don't contribute to any interesting discourse on the topic. I think it's fair to dismiss stupid drive-by low-effort quips, personally.

escape_goat 4y ago

Maybe he does know what risible means and is in fact extremely well informed, much better informed than you are, to the point where offering sarcasm on the apparent basis of absolutely nothing but what you've learnt from the internet is actually not a valuable contribution to the conversation but instead embarrassing. Have you considered this possibility as well?