Non-NIST Cipher Suite

One of the most upsetting things about the recent revelations about the NSA’s shenanigans is that it has apparently devoted US$250M to suborning international standards.

(One of the very upsetting things about these revelations is that there are several most upsetting things.) Over the last few weeks, just about everyone in the standards and crypto business has been looking over the crypto with an eye towards seeing what the NSA might have subverted.

There hasn’t been much definitive to say. There is the much-discussed elliptic curve random number generator in NIST’s documents. There is also the concern that the elliptic curves that are part of NSA Suite B aren’t as strong as they could be. There are also discussions about interference in various standards from IPsec to TLS to whatever.

SOURCE: silentcircle.wordpress.com