
ISO Rejects NSA Encryption Algorithms - rayascott
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/09/iso_rejects_nsa.html
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CiPHPerCoder
Previous HN discussion on the same topic (different source):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15302662](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15302662)

I felt that tptacek's top comment in that thread was the best synopsis for the
whole situation.

~~~
jancsika
tptacek's comment lower down is interesting:

> I've already stipulated the politics of the story, which are deeply boring
> to me.

I'm not sure it's possible to be bored by "politics"\-- i.e., to be bored by
evidence from the Snowden leaks that the NSA is interested in pushing and has
pushed kleptographic cryptography to undermine standards-- and be seriously
engaged in a technical analysis.

It's like saying you're only interested in the code of the winning entry of
the Underhanded C Contest, but not at all interested in the rules of the
challenge. If someone's analysis under those circumstances is that the code
looks like it does a fine job of completing its task, one should be skeptical.

[1] [http://www.underhanded-c.org/](http://www.underhanded-c.org/)

~~~
meowface
His point is that he wanted to discuss the technical details of the cipher
design and not the political background story. He specifically said he agrees
that it seems sensible ISO has not adopted this standard in light of NSA's
subversive Dual EC DRBG deception, but that it also is very unlikely these
ciphers contain or could contain a backdoor.

He's not at all arguing that ISO is in the wrong to decline accepting the
algorithms or that the politics don't matter; just that they probably didn't
backdoor these 2 particular algorithms. NSA has voided all of their goodwill,
no doubt, but that's not what he was addressing.

I imagine the cryptographers working at NSA who are genuinely trying to design
secure, non-backdoored algorithms are very unhappy at how badly their
organization shot themselves in the foot.

------
binaryphile
Boy, those Trojans really got us with that last horse, hoowee, but this one
looks solid.

------
wallace_f
Good. Best case scenario was still bad: establishing precedent and credence in
favor of the NSA.

