J. Bernsein is my type of guy. He\u2019s opinionated, crabby, curmudgeonly, and brilliant. He\u2019s particularly brilliant when it comes to matters of cryptography. One of the things about being curmudgeonly is that you have little tolerance for lies and nonsense so of course he\u2019s a regular antagonist of the government and, in particular, the NSA.<\/p>\n
These days, nobody<\/i> trusts the NSA but NIST<\/a> is supposed to be different. Their job is to promulgate standards that benefit commercial entities and private citizens. In the cryptography realm they\u2019re supposed to develop, test, and standardize cryptography primitives that allow companies and citizens to protect their private\u2014predominately commercial\u2014interactions from criminals and fraudsters.<\/p>\n It hasn\u2019t always worked out that way. After getting caught conspiring with the NSA to corrupt the Dual Elliptic Curve Deterministic Random Bit Generator, NIST promised to clean up their act and be more transparent. It was an important promise because their credibility with the crypto using public was on the line.<\/p>\n I, naively, took heart with their promise to be honest brokers going forward. Sadly, according to Bernstein<\/a>, it hasn\u2019t worked out that way. It appears that they are once again conspiring with the NSA to compromise to corrupt crypto standards and doing everything in their power to cover up that fact.<\/p>\n After having several Freedom of Information requests ignored, Bernstein finally resorted to filing suit to force NIST to reveal their collaboration with the NSA. Follow the link for an excellent history of NIST\/NSA collusion from the early days of DES to the current debates about post-quantum algorithms.<\/p>\n It\u2019s sad that the public can\u2019t trust their government to have their backs on cryptographic matters but as Bernstein demonstrates, that\u2019s where we are. I don\u2019t know the answer. I just wish the NSA would put the pubic above their own convenience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" J. Bernsein is my type of guy. He\u2019s opinionated, crabby, curmudgeonly, and brilliant. He\u2019s particularly brilliant when it comes to matters of cryptography. One of the things about being curmudgeonly is that you have little tolerance for lies and nonsense … Continue reading