Tag Archives: security standards

NIST Releases First Post-Quantum Encryption Algorithms

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/08/nist-releases-first-post-quantum-encryption-algorithms.html

From the Federal Register:

After three rounds of evaluation and analysis, NIST selected four algorithms it will standardize as a result of the PQC Standardization Process. The public-key encapsulation mechanism selected was CRYSTALS-KYBER, along with three digital signature schemes: CRYSTALS-Dilithium, FALCON, and SPHINCS+.

These algorithms are part of three NIST standards that have been finalized:

NIST press release. My recent writings on post-quantum cryptographic standards.

EDITED TO ADD: Good article:

One – ML-KEM [PDF] (based on CRYSTALS-Kyber) – is intended for general encryption, which protects data as it moves across public networks. The other two –- ML-DSA [PDF] (originally known as CRYSTALS-Dilithium) and SLH-DSA [PDF] (initially submitted as Sphincs+)—secure digital signatures, which are used to authenticate online identity.

A fourth algorithm – FN-DSA [PDF] (originally called FALCON) – is slated for finalization later this year and is also designed for digital signatures.

NIST continued to evaluate two other sets of algorithms that could potentially serve as backup standards in the future.

One of the sets includes three algorithms designed for general encryption – but the technology is based on a different type of math problem than the ML-KEM general-purpose algorithm in today’s finalized standards.

NIST plans to select one or two of these algorithms by the end of 2024.

IEEE Spectrum article.

Slashdot thread.

Data Wallets Using the Solid Protocol

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/07/data-wallets-using-the-solid-protocol.html

I am the Chief of Security Architecture at Inrupt, Inc., the company that is commercializing Tim Berners-Lee’s Solid open W3C standard for distributed data ownership. This week, we announced a digital wallet based on the Solid architecture.

Details are here, but basically a digital wallet is a repository for personal data and documents. Right now, there are hundreds of different wallets, but no standard. We think designing a wallet around Solid makes sense for lots of reasons. A wallet is more than a data store—data in wallets is for using and sharing. That requires interoperability, which is what you get from an open standard. It also requires fine-grained permissions and robust security, and that’s what the Solid protocols provide.

I think of Solid as a set of protocols for decoupling applications, data, and security. That’s the sort of thing that will make digital wallets work.

Detecting Malicious Trackers

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/05/detecting-malicious-trackers.html

From Slashdot:

Apple and Google have launched a new industry standard called “Detecting Unwanted Location Trackers” to combat the misuse of Bluetooth trackers for stalking. Starting Monday, iPhone and Android users will receive alerts when an unknown Bluetooth device is detected moving with them. The move comes after numerous cases of trackers like Apple’s AirTags being used for malicious purposes.

Several Bluetooth tag companies have committed to making their future products compatible with the new standard. Apple and Google said they will continue collaborating with the Internet Engineering Task Force to further develop this technology and address the issue of unwanted tracking.

This seems like a good idea, but I worry about false alarms. If I am walking with a friend, will it alert if they have a Bluetooth tracking device in their pocket?

Apple Announces Post-Quantum Encryption Algorithms for iMessage

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/02/apple-announces-post-quantum-encryption-algorithms-for-imessage.html

Apple announced PQ3, its post-quantum encryption standard based on the Kyber secure key-encapsulation protocol, one of the post-quantum algorithms selected by NIST in 2022.

There’s a lot of detail in the Apple blog post, and more in Douglas Stabila’s security analysis.

I am of two minds about this. On the one hand, it’s probably premature to switch to any particular post-quantum algorithms. The mathematics of cryptanalysis for these lattice and other systems is still rapidly evolving, and we’re likely to break more of them—and learn a lot in the process—over the coming few years. But if you’re going to make the switch, this is an excellent choice. And Apple’s ability to do this so efficiently speaks well about its algorithmic agility, which is probably more important than its particular cryptographic design. And it is probably about the right time to worry about, and defend against, attackers who are storing encrypted messages in hopes of breaking them later on future quantum computers.

You Can’t Rush Post-Quantum-Computing Cryptography Standards

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/08/you-cant-rush-post-quantum-computing-standards.html

I just read an article complaining that NIST is taking too long in finalizing its post-quantum-computing cryptography standards.

This process has been going on since 2016, and since that time there has been a huge increase in quantum technology and an equally large increase in quantum understanding and interest. Yet seven years later, we have only four algorithms, although last week NIST announced that a number of other candidates are under consideration, a process that is expected to take “several years.

The delay in developing quantum-resistant algorithms is especially troubling given the time it will take to get those products to market. It generally takes four to six years with a new standard for a vendor to develop an ASIC to implement the standard, and it then takes time for the vendor to get the product validated, which seems to be taking a troubling amount of time.

Yes, the process will take several years, and you really don’t want to rush it. I wrote this last year:

Ian Cassels, British mathematician and World War II cryptanalyst, once said that “cryptography is a mixture of mathematics and muddle, and without the muddle the mathematics can be used against you.” This mixture is particularly difficult to achieve with public-key algorithms, which rely on the mathematics for their security in a way that symmetric algorithms do not. We got lucky with RSA and related algorithms: their mathematics hinge on the problem of factoring, which turned out to be robustly difficult. Post-quantum algorithms rely on other mathematical disciplines and problems­—code-based cryptography, hash-based cryptography, lattice-based cryptography, multivariate cryptography, and so on­—whose mathematics are both more complicated and less well-understood. We’re seeing these breaks because those core mathematical problems aren’t nearly as well-studied as factoring is.

[…]

As the new cryptanalytic results demonstrate, we’re still learning a lot about how to turn hard mathematical problems into public-key cryptosystems. We have too much math and an inability to add more muddle, and that results in algorithms that are vulnerable to advances in mathematics. More cryptanalytic results are coming, and more algorithms are going to be broken.

As to the long time it takes to get new encryption products to market, work on shortening it:

The moral is the need for cryptographic agility. It’s not enough to implement a single standard; it’s vital that our systems be able to easily swap in new algorithms when required.

Whatever NIST comes up with, expect that it will get broken sooner than we all want. It’s the nature of these trap-door functions we’re using for public-key cryptography.