[saag] Re: Attacking standardization

Nico Williams writes:
> But the
> reality is that the TLAs only really need the codepoints (which they can
> camp on) and they can use their regulatory power to get what they want.

Within NSA's 2013 quarter-billion-dollar budget to "covertly influence
and/or overtly leverage" systems to "make the systems in question
exploitable", one of the budget items was to "influence policies,
standards and specification for commercial public key technologies".
See the word "standards" there? Or look at

    https://web.archive.org/web/20250827175413/https://media.defense.gov/2025/May/30/2003728741/-1/-1/0/CSA_CNSA_2.0_ALGORITHMS.PDF

saying "hybrid solutions may be allowed or required due to protocol
standards".

BSI is managing to require that post-quantum cryptography be rolled out
only as part of double encryption or double signatures on top of
approved "classical methods" (because post-quantum cryptosystems are
"comparatively new or have been less investigated, especially with
regard to implementation security"). Meanwhile an IETF WG with "improve
security" in its charter isn't managing to do that. The money flow here
isn't exactly a secret.

---D. J. Bernstein

P.S. For readers bumping into this message who haven't seen the context:
Please see https://blog.cr.yp.to/20251004-weakened.html to understand
what's actually going on here.


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