3 ms·
The IBM/NSA teams discovering differential cryptanalysis and sitting on it until Biham and Shamir independently discovered it a decade later is a better example
by dogma1138 2y ago
The IBM/NSA teams discovering differential cryptanalysis and sitting on it until Biham and Shamir independently discovered it a decade later is a better example.
And even then they did use that knowledge to make DES more resistant to it rather than simply ignoring it. It wasn’t made public because at the time - early to mid 70’s it would’ve made most other block ciphers very beakeable. DES wasn’t broken until the late 90’s.
CryptoAG was about backdooring an implementation not an algorithm or finding a novel attack.
- bayindirh 2y agoI know the difference, and I'm aware that Crypto AG scandal is not the same thing as not selecting better curves or withholding new techniques or exploits. On the other hand, the end result is the same: lower security. It's irrelevant whether you backdoor an implementation (it was actually weakening the algorithm itself), design something with backdoors, tap dark fibers or lobby politicians for escrow laws. It's about the spirit of the motivation, not how you achieve it.
- kanbrtka 2y agoThey did make DES more resistant (but for all we know they had another method of breaking it). But they tried to foist Dual_EC_DRBG on everyone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_EC_DRBG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_EC_DRBG
- dogma1138 2y agoThe fact that the NSA continually tries to backdoor implementations suggest that they likely do not have some magic method of breaking encryption that does not rely on brute force or weakening specific components in the implementation of cryptographic systems.