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Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by jacooper on Friday August 05, 2022 @06:50PM (#32362855)
Flippo valrosida and Matthey green aren't too happy.

https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/15556838562625208...

Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by jeffparsons on Friday August 05, 2022 @07:58PM (#32363363)
I think this is a sloppy take. If you read the full back-and-forth on the FOI request between D.J. Bernstein and NIST, it becomes readily apparent that there is _something_ rotten in the state of NIST.

Now of course that doesn't necessarily mean that NIST's work is completely compromised by the NSA (even though it has been in the past), but there are other problems that are similarly serious. For example, if NIST is unable to explain how certain key decisions were made along the way to standardisation, and those decisions appear to go against what would be considered by prominent experts in the field as "good practice", then NIST has a serious process problem. This is important work. It affects everyone in the world. And certain key parts of NIST's decision making process seem to be explained with not much more than a shrug. That's a problem.

Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by tptacek on Friday August 05, 2022 @09:25PM (#32363899)
All you're saying here is that NIST failed to comply with FOIA. That's not unusual. No public body does a reliably good job of complying with FOIA, and many public bodies seem to have a bad habit of pre-judging the "merits" of FOIA requests, when no merit threshold exists for their open records requirements.

NIST failing to comply with FOIA makes them an intransigent public body, like all the rest of them, from your local water reclamation board to the Department of Energy.

It emphatically does not lend support to any of this litigants concerns about the PQC process. I don't know enough (really, anything) about the PQC "contest" to judge claims about its validity, but I do know enough --- like, the small amount of background information needed --- to say that it's risible to suggest that any of the participating teams were compromised by intelligence agencies; that claim having been made in this post saps its credibility.

So, two things I think a reasonable person would want to establish here: first, that NIST's behavior with respect to the FOIA request is hardly any kind of smoking gun, and second that the narrative being presented in this post about the PQC contest seems somewhere between "hand-wavy" and "embarrassing".

Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by jeffparsons on Friday August 05, 2022 @10:39PM (#32364306)
> It emphatically does not lend support to any of this litigants concerns about the PQC process.

I agree with most of what you're saying except for this. In my view, unlike some of the other organisations you mentioned, the _only value_ of NIST is in the quality and transparency of its processes. My reading of the DJB/NIST FOI dialogue is that there is reason to believe NIST has serious process problems that go far beyond simply handling an FOI well. From their own responses, it reads as if they aren't able to articulate themselves why they would choose one contestant's algorithm over another's. That kind of undermines the entire point of having an open contest.

Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by tptacek on Saturday August 06, 2022 @01:58AM (#32365309)
The peer review NIST is refereeing happened in the open. Thus far, Bernstein is the only person making these claims. For all the words he burns on NIST's sordid history, he chose to participate in this NIST-run process, and imploded publicly only after the results were announced. There are dozens of cryptographers with reputations in the field comparable to Bernstein's who also participated. Bernstein is the only one suggesting that NSA bribed the contest winners.

From what I can tell, nobody who actually works in this field is taking any of this seriously; what I see is a whole lot of eye rolling and "there he goes again". But you don't get any of that on HN, because HN isn't a forum for cryptography researchers. All you get is Bernstein's cheering section.

I was part of Bernstein's cheering section! I understand the feeling. And, like, I'm still using ChaPoly and 25519 in preference to any of the alternatives! He's done hugely important work. But he has, not to put too fine a point on it, a fucked up reputation among his peers in cryptography research, and he's counting on you not to know that, and to confuse a routine, workaday FOIA lawsuit with some monumental new bit of litigation.

It's a deeply cynical thing for him to be doing.

He could have just announced, in his lovably Bernsteinian† way, that NIST had failed in its FOIA obligations, and he was holding them to account. I'd be cheering too. But he wrote a screed that culminated in an allegation that NSA had bribed members of PQC teams to weaken their submissions. Simply risible; it's embarrassing to be part of a community that dignifies that argument, even if I absolutely get why it's happening. I have contempt for him for exploiting all of you.

None of this is to take anything away from his FOIA suit. I stan his FOIA attorneys. The suit, boring as it is, is a good thing. He should win, and he almost certainly will; L&L wouldn't have taken the case if he wasn't going to. Just keep in mind, people sue and win over FOIA mistakes all the time. In Illinois, you even get fee recovery when you win. This isn't Bernstein v United States!

† I'm not being snarky; I was a multiple-decades-long admirer of that style.

Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by chasil on Saturday August 06, 2022 @03:27AM (#32365819)
The main concern that I have is the NIST refusal to consider a hybrid design as described in the blog, coupled with the fact that OpenSSH has disregarded NIST and standardized on hybrid NTRU-Prime.

There had to be substance to accomplish this, and it moves all of UNIX plus Microsoft away from crystals. It would seem hugely damaging to crystals as the winner of the latest round.

Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by tptacek on Saturday August 06, 2022 @03:32AM (#32365853)
I don't think you understand what's going on here. The point of the PQC "contest" is to figure out which PQC constructions to use. It's not to design hybrid classical/PQC schemes: everybody already knows how to do that. The idea that NIST should have recommended CRYSTALS-Kyber+Curve25519 is a little like suggesting that they should have recommended Rijndael+DES-EDE.

It's simply not NIST's job to tell tls-wg how to fit PQC into HTTPS, or the OpenSSH team how to fit it into SSH.

If you trust the OpenSSH team more than NIST, that's fine. I think that's a reasonable thing to do. Just do whatever OpenSSH does, and you don't have to worry about how corrupt NIST's process is. I don't even think NIST is corrupt, and I still think you'd be better off just paying attention to whatever OpenSSH does.

Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by chasil on Saturday August 06, 2022 @03:48AM (#32365949)
That would make it seem that the lengthy hybrid discussion in the blog is a misdirection.

I will grant you that this does support your argument.

EDIT: Actually, what you have said does not seem at all correct.

In DJB's Apon complaint, we find this text:

'For example, in email to pqc-forum dated 30 Oct 2019 15:38:10 +0000 (2019), NIST posted technical comments regarding hybrid encryption modes and asked for feedback “either here on the pqc-forum or by contacting us at [email protected]” (emphasis added).'

If hybrid encryption is entirely beyond the purview of the NIST PQC competition, then why did this discussion and feedback request ever take place?

Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by tptacek on Saturday August 06, 2022 @10:21AM (#32368335)
Look, I'm just not going to dignify the argument that there is somehow some controversy over the NIST PQC contest not recommending higher-level constructions to plug PQC KEMs into Curve25519 key exchanges. I get that this seems like a super interesting controversy to you, because Bernstein's blog post is misleading you, but this simply isn't a real controversy.
Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by chasil on Saturday August 06, 2022 @01:20PM (#32369873)
Hopefully, the judge will help, as before.
Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by tptacek on Saturday August 06, 2022 @03:40PM (#32370938)
It's somewhat unlikely that there will even be a judge here.
Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by djmdjm on Saturday August 06, 2022 @06:00AM (#32366627)
Repeating this here. We (OpenSSH) have not disregarded NIST, we just added a PQ algorithm before NIST finished their competition and we'll almost certainly add support for the finalist fairly soon.
Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by chasil on Saturday August 06, 2022 @01:31PM (#32369954)
I will eagerly await their arrival, and be sure to sysupgrade.
Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by silisili on Friday August 05, 2022 @08:36PM (#32363622)
What's with the infighting here? Nothing about the post comes across as conspiracy theory level or reputation ruining. It makes me question the motives of those implying he's crazy, to be honest.
Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by tptacek on Friday August 05, 2022 @09:26PM (#32363912)
Post-quantum cryptography is essentially a full-employment program for elite academic public key cryptographers, which is largely what the "winning" PQC teams consist of. So, yeah, suggesting that one of those teams was compromised by an intelligence agency is "conspiracy theory level".

Nobody is denying the legitimacy of the suit itself. NIST is obligated to follow public records law, and public records law is important. Filippo's message, which we're all commenting on here, says that directly.

Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by 7373737373 on Saturday August 06, 2022 @12:04AM (#32364725)
Has the general notion of "conspiracy theory" ever carried any positive value? It only seems to exist to discredit "doubters against the majority consensus" without substance. But I guess words like "crank" wouldn't even exist if there weren't many people like it, so it carries some "definitional" value.

Because they show total disregard for someones opinion (in a more formal way: "unlike you/them, i completely agree with the (apparent) majority consensus (which it also implies), these words probably don't belong into a serious discussion.

Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by woodruffw on Saturday August 06, 2022 @01:58AM (#32365303)
Our notion of "crank"/conspiracy theory is a logical consequence of "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." When that evidence isn't provided all that remains is an exceptionally convoluted explanation, generally involving more parties than necessary, hence "conspiracy."
Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by 7373737373 on Saturday August 06, 2022 @04:22AM (#32366126)
These words probably also tend to describe people who rather hold a belief in these theories, instead of treating them as statements without evidence (which both sides probably should, because there is no evidence against it).

On the other hand, discussing statements without evidence (even if they are not presented as beliefs), has some (opportunity?) cost, which the "theorists" are willing to pay

Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by throwaway654329 on Friday August 05, 2022 @08:25PM (#32363536)
Dismissing this lawsuit as a conspiracy theory is embarrassing for both of them.

There is ample evidence to document malfeasance by the involved parties, and it’s reasonable to ask NIST to follow public law.

Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by detaro on Friday August 05, 2022 @08:26PM (#32363551)
> Dismissing this lawsuit as a conspiracy theory is embarrassing for both of them.

They are not dismissing the lawsuit.

Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by throwaway654329 on Friday August 05, 2022 @09:40PM (#32363994)
One says he’s doing it wrong. The other says he hopes that he wins, of course!

Meanwhile they go on to attack Bernstein, mischaracterize his writing, completely dismiss his historical analysis, mock him with memes as a conspiracy theorist, and to top it off they question his internal motivations (which they somehow know) as some kind of a sore loser which is demonstrably false.

The plot twist for the last point: he is still in the running for round four and his former PhD students did win major parts of round three.

Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by tptacek on Friday August 05, 2022 @09:57PM (#32364097)
Two things can easily be true: that NIST mishandled a FOIA request, and that there isn't especially good reason to accept on faith Bernstein's concerns about the PQC process, which is unrelated to how they handle FOIA.

Meanwhile: you haven't actually added any light to this subthread: the tweets we're talking about do not dismiss the suit. Cryptographic researchers that aren't stans of Daniel Bernstein (there are a lot of those) are also unhappy about NIST clowning up FOIA.

You are in a deeply weird and broken place if you think you can divide the world into "people who take what Daniel Bernstein says on faith" and "people who trust NIST". I don't know if you're in that place! But some people on this thread clearly are.

Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by onetimeusename on Saturday August 06, 2022 @12:13PM (#32369316)
You wrote a large number of comments on this so I am asking this here since it's fresh.

Can you comment on why you think djb thinks it is worth investigating if the NSA is attempting to destroy cryptography with weak pqc standards? I read through some of the entries NIST just announced and there are indeed attacks, grave attacks, that exist against Kyber and Falcon. I have no reason to believe the authors of those specs work with the NSA. Wouldn't a more reasonable conclusion be that we need to do more work on pqc? Maybe I have it wrong and he is just trying to rule out that possibility but his long rant which was 80% about NIST and their history with the dual EC backdoor really points at djb concluding the NSA is deliberately trying to weaken crypto by colluding with a bunch of people who probably don't care about money or the NSA's goals that much.

Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by tptacek on Saturday August 06, 2022 @12:23PM (#32369420)
You'd have to ask Bernstein. I think it's helpful to take a bit of time (I know this is a big ask) to go see how Bernstein has comported himself in other standards groups; the CFRG curve standardization discussion is a good example. The reason I said there's a lot of eye-rolling about this post among cryptographers is that I think this is pretty normal behavior for Bernstein.

I used to find it inspiring; he got himself crosswise against the IETF DNS working group, which actively ostracized him, and I thought the stance he took there was almost heroic (also, I hate DNSSEC, and so does he). But when you see that same person get in weird random fights with other people, over and over again, well: there's a common thread there.

Is it worth investigating whether NSA is trying weaken PQC? Sure. Nobody should trust NSA. Nobody should trust NIST! There's value in NIST catalyzing all the academic asymmetric cryptography researchers into competing against each other, so the PQC event probably did everybody a service. But no part of that value comes from NIST blessing the result.

It's probably helpful for you to know that I think PQC writ large is just a little bit silly. Quantum computers of unusual size? I don't believe they exist. I think an under-appreciated reason government QC spending happens is because government spending is a goal in and of itself; one of NSA's top 3 missions is to secure more budget for NSA --- it might even be the #1 goal. Meanwhile, PQC is a full-employment program for academic cryptographers working on "Fun" asymmetric schemes that would otherwise be totally ignored in an industry that has more or less standardized on the P-curves and Curve25519.

Be that as it may: whether or not NSA is working to "weaken" CRYSTALS-Kyber is besides the point. NSA didn't invent CRYSTALS. A team of cryptographers, including some huge names in modern public key crypto research, did. Does NSA have secret attacks against popular academic crypto schemes? Probably. You almost hope so, because we pay them a fuckload of a lot of money to develop those attacks. But you can say that about literally every academic cryptosystem.

You probably also don't need me to tell you again how much I think formal cryptographic standards are a force for evil in the industry.

Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by onetimeusename on Saturday August 06, 2022 @02:42PM (#32370526)
ok, thanks. I didn't know that about djb's history as far as picking fights with standards groups. I don't know much about him outside of the primitives he designed. That makes some sense in context now because the implication just seemed like a stretch. Cryptosystems break and have flaws in them, that's nothing new. It's just strange to leap to "The NSA did it", but again, I didn't know he just tends to accuse people of that.

I agree about the PQC stuff and committees. Anyways, thanks for clarifying this.

Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by tptacek on Saturday August 06, 2022 @02:54PM (#32370599)
Just bear in mind that this is just opinions and hearsay on my part. Like, I think there's value in relaying what I think I know and what I've heard, but I'm not a cryptographer, I paid almost no attention to the PQC stuff (in fact, I pretty much only ever swapped PQC into my resident set when Bernstein managed to start drama with other cryptographers whose names I knew), and there are possibly other sides to these stories. I've seen Bernstein drama where it's pretty clear he's deeply in the wrong, and I've seen Bernstein drama where it's pretty clear he wasn't.

The suit is good. NIST isn't allowed to clown up FOIA; they have to do it right.

Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by throwaway654329 on Friday August 05, 2022 @11:18PM (#32364489)
I am definitely not in that place. We clearly disagree on a few points.

The issues raised in the blog post aren’t just about NIST mishandling the FOIA. By reducing it to the lawsuit, this is already a bad faith engagement.

The blog post is primarily about the history of NSA sabotage as well as contemporary efforts, including (NIST’s) failures to stop this sabotage. Finally it finishes the recent history by raising that there are mishandling issues in the pq-crypto competition. The lawsuit is at the end of a long chronological text with the goal of finding more information to extend the facts that we know. This is a noble goal, and it’s hard to accept any argument that the past in this area hasn’t been troubled.

Weirdly there is an assumption made immediately by Filippo, made without basis in fact: he supposes Bernstein somehow lost the contest and that this is his motivation for action. Bernstein hasn’t lost, though some structured lattices have won. He still has submitted material in the running as far as I understand things. None the less we see that Filippo tells us the deepest internal motivations of Bernstein, though we don’t learn how he learned these personal secrets. This is simply not reasonable. Maybe it could be phrased as a question but then the rhetorical tool of denying questions as a valid form of engagement would start to fade away.

Back to the core of the tweets: One of the two says he hopes he wins the suit, the other says he’s doing it wrong. We could read that as they’re both hoping he wins, and yet… it’s hard to believe when the rhetoric centers around Bernstein’s supposedly harmful rhetoric in the blog post and lawsuit as being harmful to the community at large.

Bernstein isn’t attacking a singular person as Filippo is attacking Bernstein. Filippo even includes a meme to drive home the personal nature of the attacks.

For me personally, I used to find this meme funny until I learned the history of the meme. This strikes me as blind spot, my very own once. The context and history of that meme and that scene is dark.

So then, here is some light for you: This meme is a parody from a comedy. In turn it is a parody of a famous scene from a film portraying John Nash. It’s about a very famous mentally ill mathematician. Nash in this scene is the iconic, quintessential conspiracy theorist insane person once considered a genius. Nash is drawing connections that aren’t there and that aren’t reasonable. He was deeply mentally ill at that point in his life. That is a brutal thing to say in itself about anyone, but… it gets worse.

Nash was also famously a virulent antisemitic in some of his psychological breaks and outbursts. I don’t hold him responsible for his ravings as he was a paranoid schizophrenic, but wow I would not throw up that specific meme at a (Jewish) mathematician while implying he’s a crazy conspiracy theorist. It’s some really gross mental health hate mixed with ambiguity about the rest. It could be funny in some contexts, I suppose, but not this one.

So in summary: that is a gross meme to post in a series of ad-hominem tweet attacks calling (obviously Jewish family name) Bernstein a conspiracy theorist, saying he is making obviously crazy, baseless connections. The root of his concern is not insane and ignoring the history of sabotage in this area by NSA is unreasonable.

I assume this meme subtext is a mistake and it wasn’t intended as antisemitic. Still after processing the mental health punching down part of the meme, I had trouble assuming good faith about any of it. Talk about harmful rhetoric in the community.

I also note that they attack him in a number of other bad faith ways which make me lose my assumption of good faith generally about their well wishing on his lawsuit being successfully.

Meanwhile, I don’t take Bernstein on faith. I find his arguments and points in the blog post convincing. I find his history of work in the public interest convincing. I don’t care about popularity contests or personal competition. Meanwhile you say you’re not following the contest.

Corruption of NIST and other related parties isn’t just possible, we know it has happened. We should be extra vigilant that it doesn’t repeat. FOIA is a weak mechanism but it’s something. Has any corruption or sabotage happened here? We don’t know yet, and more important NIST have promised transparency that they haven’t delivered. A promise is a good start but it’s not sufficient.

NIST have slipped their own deadlines, they have been silent in concerning ways, and they’re still failing to provide critical details about the last round of NSA sabotage that directly involved NIST standardization.

Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by tptacek on Saturday August 06, 2022 @10:35AM (#32368463)
I just want to jump back here for a second, because when I responded to this comment last night, I hadn't really read it (for I think obvious reasons, but also I was watching Sandman). So I wrote some replies last night that I'm not super proud of --- not because I said anything wrong, but because I didn't acknowledge the majesty of the argument I had been confronted with.

This right here is a comment that makes the following argument, which I will helpfully outline:

* Filippo Valsorda wrote a tweet that included a meme from "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia"

* That meme is a parody of "A Beautiful Mind"

* "A Beautiful Mind" is about John Nash --- hold on to that fact, because the argument is about to bifurcate

* John Nash was mentally ill

* John Nash was virulently anti-semitic (hold on to your butts...)

* Ergo, Filippo Valsorda is both bigoted against the mentally ill, and also an anti-semite.

Can we do other memes like this? I'd like your exegesis of the "Homer Simpson dissolves backwards into the hedges" meme next!

Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by throwaway654329 on Saturday August 06, 2022 @05:22PM (#32371691)
> … I didn't acknowledge the majesty of the argument I had been confronted with.

Gee, thanks, I think. Sorry to say we don’t agree on your summary of my comment.

> Filippo Valsorda wrote a tweet that included a meme from "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia"

From this, we already have serious disagreements. It’s part of a series of tweets amplified by others. It isn’t a single tweet in isolation even when we only look at the direct author. We do agree on the source of the clip, though I think you weren’t familiar with the background of the subject parodied in the clip as I raised it. Perhaps you do not believe it or perhaps you think that the parody somehow erases what was parodied originally. Reasonable people can read it many ways.

> That meme is a parody of "A Beautiful Mind"

There are many memes with text included, though this was a video, and it seems clearly a parody of Nash from that film. Here is one example meme that I did not create: https://me.me/i/mathematician-john-nash-during-a-schizophren...

> John Nash was mentally ill

Yep. The implication of using such a meme to punch down is mirrored in the words of the related tweets calling him a conspiracy theorist. This wasn’t as you tried to say, a single tweet, it’s presented in a context that is harsh, and condemning.

> John Nash was virulently anti-semitic

Maybe, it’s unclear if it was a byproduct of his mental illness or a sincerely held belief. It’s a third rail, regardless. I won’t hold a mentally ill person accountable for stuff they say during an episode, and I also won’t use it as a joke.

> Ergo, Filippo Valsorda is both bigoted against the mentally ill, and also an anti-semite.

This isn’t my claim. My claim is that it’s completely inappropriate on many levels to post not only that meme but to use it in tandem with direct personal attacks on Bernstein. This seems especially relevant in a thread supposedly about damaging behavior of other people in the community.

I would prefer you don’t cover for mental health stigmatization or antisemitic dog whistling even a tiny bit, especially if it was not intended. Painting me as crazy for my analysis is shitty. You asked me to bring some light and then attack me for sharing my actual thoughts. You didn’t acknowledge my insight about Jewish names, either. Was that news to you? Dismissively omitting anything about that insight is weird.

Please leave no room for ambiguity here, it is a very dangerous time in the world, and in America, especially after the Tree of Life murders. There are many many other examples of terrible stuff like that - and anything that even remotely smells like that must be immediately challenged in my view. No doubt this personal context makes myself and others extra sensitive. That is exactly why I explained my understanding of the meaning.

I am happy to provide an analysis of Homer Simpson memes in context if it can help us break the ice and not end this thread on hard or hateful terms.

Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by tptacek on Saturday August 06, 2022 @05:34PM (#32371770)
"Crazy" is not the word I would use about what you've written here. It is unlikely you and I are going to have any productive dialog after this, which is totally fine; I'm happy to disengage here.
Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by throwaway654329 on Sunday August 07, 2022 @09:49AM (#32376455)
Okay, I’m happy to disengage as well. Thank you for your time and also for your insight.
Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by tptacek on Saturday August 06, 2022 @01:43AM (#32365220)
There's nothing "bad faith" about it. The tweet is supportive of the lawsuit, and not supportive of Bernstein's weird, heavily-telegraphed, long-predicted claims that a NIST contest he opted to participate in was corrupted by dint of not prioritizing his own designs.

Your bit about the "obviously Jewish family name" thing is itself risible, and you should be embarrassed for trying to make it a thing.

Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by throwaway654329 on Saturday August 06, 2022 @04:30AM (#32366162)
Your augment that the selection doesn’t pick his designs doesn’t square with SPHINCS+ winning, and with others remaining in the running. His former PhD student won with Kyber. Bernstein did very well here and you’re misleading people by suggesting he had his ass handed to him.

He has published (and it is linked from the blog) his views on how to run cryptographic contests before their recent selection finished (late). His comments are not simply the result of the round three announcement.

As to the offensive meme, I note that you don’t even dispute the punching down about mental health. Gross.

Bernstein is a German-Jewish name. These names were given and in some cases forced on people in history to give a signal to others, usually negative. This is a hint, not a fact of his beliefs. My understanding is that he does come from a Jewish family. I won’t presume to speak for Bernstein’s beliefs, just that I see something obviously tense and probably wrong.

It’s your choice to not care to comment about the antisemitic connotations that I raised. My point was that for some people this is impossible to not see. It is highly offensive given the context. Now I understand that you refuse to do so when shown. Also extremely gross.

Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by tptacek on Saturday August 06, 2022 @10:16AM (#32368295)
I didn't even notice a "punching down about mental health" thing. You wrote a long comment, I skimmed it. Your allegation that Filippo and Matt Green are antisemitic is ludicrous.

I didn't say Bernstein had his ass handed to him. I said that he wrote thousands and thousands of words about his reasons to mistrust NIST (not just here but elsewhere, and often), but still participated in the PQC contest, raising these concerns only at its conclusion.

Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by throwaway654329 on Saturday August 06, 2022 @04:35PM (#32371373)
> I didn't even notice a "punching down about mental health" thing. You wrote a long comment, I skimmed it.

That tracks, okay. It’s the weekend and I’m a nobody on the internet. Thank you for talk the time to continue to engage with me.

> Your allegation that Filippo and Matt Green are antisemitic is ludicrous.

That isn’t an allegation that I am making, you are misunderstanding and misrepresenting my statements. My comment even disclaimed that this probably isn’t intentional, merely that it is one read of that meme. My core point is this: posting that meme is unhelpful in a thread about Bernstein’s supposedly harmful behavior. Maybe you think it’s a funny joke, I don’t.

Either way - funny joke or not - it certainly isn’t a healthy discourse for “the community” to call someone names and to dismiss them as some kind of unhinged conspiracy theorist.

> I didn't say Bernstein had his ass handed to him.

Indeed, I did not claim to quote you there. I am characterizing your words into what I understand as your point. Let’s call this “the sore loser discourse” - it is repeated in this thread by others. It seems to be implied by my read when you say: “…he opted to participate in was corrupted by dint of not prioritizing his own designs.” I preemptively acknowledge that I may have misunderstood you.

What do you mean to convey by “dint of not” roughy? Don’t SPHINCS+ (Standardized in round three) and Classic McEliece (still in the running) count as prioritizing his designs? Also, what is wrong with participating in this standardization process? He seems to be unhappy with NIST before, and during the process, and with ample cause. By participating, it’s clear he has learned more and by winning parts of the competition, he’s not a sore loser.

If he wasn’t a part of this competition, people would probably dismiss his criticism as simply being outside. It’s harder to dismiss him if he is part of it, and even harder when his submissions win. It isn’t a clean sweep, but it’s lifetime achievement levels for some people to have a hand in just one such algorithm, selected in such a process. He has a hand in several remaining submissions as far as I understand the process and the submissions.

> I said that he wrote thousands and thousands of words about his reasons to mistrust NIST (not just here but elsewhere, and often),

So you note he has been saying these things for a long time. On that we agree.

> but still participated in the PQC contest,

You go on to note that he then participated in the process. He is documented in his attempts to use the process tools to raise specific issues and to try to have them settled by NIST as promised, with transparency. NIST has failed to bring that transparency.

Confusingly (to me anyway) your next statement continues with a contradiction:

> raising these concerns only at its conclusion

Which is it? Was he constantly raising these issues or only raising them at the end (of round three)?

Alternatively I could read this as “at its (the blog post) conclusion” which would be extremely confusing. I presume this isn’t what you meant but if so, okay, I am really missing the point.

Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by svnpenn on Friday August 05, 2022 @08:22PM (#32363516)
Filippo Valsorda seems to be happy to ignore the fact that NIST already let an NSA backdoor in, as recently as 2014:

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_EC_DRBG

is he really just going to ignore something from 8 years ago?

Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by throwaway654329 on Friday August 05, 2022 @08:38PM (#32363637)
Yes, he appears to be unreasonably dismissive of the blindly obvious history and the current situation.

As an aside, this tracks with his choice of employers - at least one of which was a known and documented NSA collaborator (as well as a victim, irony of irony) before he took the job with them.

As Upton Sinclair remarked: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

Joining Google after Snowden revealed PRISM and BULLRUN, as well as MUSCULAR, is almost too rich to believe, Meanwhile he asserts and dismisses Bernstein as a conspiracy theorist. It’s a classic bad faith ad-hominem coincidence theory.

[dead]
Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by tptacek on Friday August 05, 2022 @09:29PM (#32363930)
First, last I checked, Filippo does not in fact work at Google.

Second: the guidelines on this site forbid you to write comments like this; in fact, this pattern of comments is literally the most frequent source of moderator admonitions on HN.

Filippo hardly needs me to defend his reputation, but, as a service to HN and to you in particular, I'd want to raise your awareness of the risk of beclowning yourself by suggesting that he, of all people, is somehow compromised.

[dead]
Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by tptacek on Saturday August 06, 2022 @02:41AM (#32365561)
It's funny how you think it's a mic drop that you didn't bother to check basic facts before attempting to defame someone by name, anonymous commenter.

I just told you this was a dumb hill to die on, but I can't stop you from commenting like this.

Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by ghoward on Friday August 05, 2022 @09:02PM (#32363777)
Thanks for letting me know. I think I'll consider both of them compromised.
Re:NSA, NIST, and post-quantum crypto: my second lawsuit aga... by jacooper on Friday August 05, 2022 @10:20PM (#32364205)
Man, mobile typos suck.