I was under the impression that only fools trust NIST after DUAL_EC_whatsit.

Is that not the case?

You mean ANSI/ISO/NIST and Dual_EC_DRBG, that everyone suspected had a backdoor before it was included as one of multiple options? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_EC_DRBG#Timeline_of_Dua...

Or the s-boxes in DES, that the NSA suggested to IBM + NIST's predecessor, so as to be resistant to then-not-widely-known differential cryptanalysis? https://web.archive.org/web/20120106042939/http://securespee...

>You mean ANSI/ISO/NIST and Dual_EC_DRBG, that everyone suspected had a backdoor before it was included as one of multiple options?

What's this snarky reply supposed to imply?

>Or the s-boxes in DES, that the NSA suggested to IBM + NIST's predecessor, so as to be resistant to then-not-widely-known differential cryptanalysis?

In your rush to write this oh-so-pithy comment, did you somehow get mixed up and think that when I wrote "Dual EC", I somehow meant s-boxes?

He/she means that there is good things coming out of the NSA/NIST collaborations (another example of SHA0->SHA1, introducing a "mysterious" left shift that made SHA1 much stronger), and the bad ones are caught quickly.

One of those things happened after 9/11, and one of those things happened before.

There is a widely held belief that the US IC changed fundamentally in terms of their regard for their own raison d’etre that day.

It'll be curious, looking back from the near future, what prompted the next fundamental change.

I'd like to think the US is in the midst of that now, with the Afghan withdrawal and Ukraine war.

Things have changed quite a bit since then.

How so? Or rather, taking change for a given, what are believable indicators that a secret organization outside normal systems of law and publicity has changed _for the better_? After all, the Snowden relevations lead not to the NSA deciding that creating a global panopticon for a super-surveillance state would be a bad idea, but rather them doing their damnedest that never again the American public would be informed of the true scale of their dystopian actions.

from the article:

> I filed a FOIA request "NSA, NIST, and post-quantum cryptography" in March 2022. NIST stonewalled, in violation of the law. Civil-rights firm Loevy & Loevy filed a lawsuit on my behalf.

> That lawsuit has been gradually revealing secret NIST documents, shedding some light on what was actually going on behind the scenes, including much heavier NSA involvement than indicated by NIST's public narrative.

even if I had never heard of DUAL_EC_whatsit, there's enough here to make me mistrust NIST.

> NIST may or may not consort with your friendly local neighborhood NSA people

It is worth noting that while breaking codes is a big part of the NSA's job, they also have a massive organization (NSA Cybersecurity, but I prefer the old name Information Assurance) that works to protect US and allied systems and cryptographic applications.

In the balance, weakening American standards does little to help with foreign collection. Their efforts would be much better spent injecting into the GOST process (Russia and friends) or State Cryptography Administration (China and friends).

> In the balance, weakening American standards does little to help with foreign collection.

While that makes logical sense, the previous actions of the NSA has demonstrated they're not a logical actor in regards to this stuff, or that there's more going on.

> In the balance, weakening American standards does little to help with foreign collection.

Though it can be greatly beneficial for domestic collection. Further, so long as the US remains a dominant player in Tech and Tech-influenced fields like finance, odds are a lot of the world is going to be at least de facto using US standards.