Category: encryption

NIST continued to evaluate two other sets of algorithms that could potentially serve as backup standards in the future. One of the sets includes three algorithms designed for general encryption — but the technology is based on a different type of math problem than the ML-KEM general-purpose algorithm in today’s finalized standards. NIST plans to select one or two of these algorithms by the end of 2024. Despite the new ones on the horizon, NIST mathematician Dustin Moody encouraged system administrators to start transitioning to the new standards ASAP, because full integration takes some time. “There is no need to wait for future standards,” Moody advised in a statement. “Go ahead and start using these three. We need to be prepared in case of an attack that defeats the algorithms in these three standards, and we will continue working on backup plans to keep our data safe. But for most applications, these new standards are the main event.”
From the NIST: This notice announces the Secretary of Commerce’s approval of three Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS):

– FIPS 203, Module-Lattice-Based Key-Encapsulation Mechanism Standard
– FIPS 204, Module-Lattice-Based Digital Signature Standard
– FIPS 205, Stateless Hash-Based Digital Signature Standard

These standards specify key establishment and digital signature schemes that are designed to resist future attacks by quantum computers, which threaten the security of current standards. The three algorithms specified in these standards are each derived from different submissions in the NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization Project.

When BleepingComputer contacted Signal about the flaw in 2018, we never received a response. Instead, a Signal Support Manager responded to a user’s concerns in the Signal forum, stating that the security of its database was never something it claimed to provide. “The database key was never intended to be a secret. At-rest encryption is not something that Signal Desktop is currently trying to provide or has ever claimed to provide,” responded the Signal employee…

[L]ast week, mobile security researchers Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk of Mysk Inc warned on X not to use Signal Desktop because of the same security weakness we reported on in 2018… In April, an independent developer, Tom Plant, created a request to merge code that uses Electron’s SafeStorage API “…to opportunistically encrypt the key with platform APIs like DPAPI on Windows and Keychain on macOS,” Plant explained in the merge request… When used, encryption keys are generated and stored using an operating system’s cryptography system and secure key stores. For example, on Macs, the encryption key would be stored in the Keychain, and on Linux, it would use the windows manager’s secret store, such as kwallet, kwallet5, kwallet6, and gnome-libsecret… While the solution would provide additional security for all Signal desktop users, the request lay dormant until last week’s X drama.

Two days ago, a Signal developer finally replied that they implemented support for Electron’s safeStorage, which would be available soon in an upcoming Beta version. While the new safeStorage implementation is tested, Signal also included a fallback mechanism that allows the program to decrypt the database using the legacy database decryption key…

Signal says that the legacy key will be removed once the new feature is tested.

“To be fair to Signal, encrypting local databases without a user-supplied password is a problem for all applications…” the article acknowledges.
“However, as a company that prides itself on its security and privacy, it was strange that the organization dismissed the issue and did not attempt to provide a solution…”

Friday the hardware review site Gamers Nexus filed a YouTube video report alleging some serious claims: that PC component manufacturer MSI left their internal warranty and RMA processing web site accessible to the open Internet, with no authentication. Virtually the entire history of MSI warranty claims going back to at least 2017 were searchable and accessible for the browsing, including customer names, email addresses, phone numbers, and serial numbers of MSI devices.

This event follows closely on the heels of a video report just a few days earlier alleging PC component manufacturer Zotac left their warranty/RMA and B2B records server open to indexing by Google.

Gamers Nexus posted their reports after informing Zotac and MSI of their open servers and verifying they were no longer accessible. However, the data from MSI’s server could have been fully scraped at this point, giving scammers a gold mine of data permitting them to impersonate MSI personnel and defraud customers. Anyone who’s filed a warranty or RMA claim with MSI in the past seven years should exercise caution when receiving unsolicited emails or phone calls purporting to be from MSI.

You also now have the option to set a username, which Signal lets you change whenever you want and delete when you don’t want it anymore. Rather than directly storing your username as part of your account details, Signal stores a cryptographic hash of your username instead; Signal uses the Ristretto 25519 hashing algorithm, essentially storing a random block of data instead of usernames themselves. This is like how online services can confirm a user’s password is valid without storing a copy of the actual password itself. “As far as we’re aware, we’re the only messaging platform that now has support for usernames that doesn’t know everyone’s usernames by default,” said Josh Lund, a senior technologist at Signal. The move is yet another piece of the Signal ethos to keep as little data on hand as it can, lest the authorities try to intrude on the company. Whittaker explained, “We don’t want to be forced to enumerate a directory of usernames.” […]

If Signal receives a subpoena demanding that they hand over all account data related to a user with a specific username that is currently active at the time that Signal looks it up, they would be able to link it to an account. That means Signal would turn over that user’s phone number, along with the account creation date and the last connection date. Whittaker stressed that this is “a pretty narrow pipeline that is guarded viciously by ACLU lawyers,” just to obtain a phone number based on a username. Signal, though, can’t confirm how long a given username has been in use, how many other accounts have used it in the past, or anything else about it. If the Signal user briefly used a username and then deleted it, Signal wouldn’t even be able to confirm that it was ever in use to begin with, much less which accounts had used it before.

In short, if you’re worried about Signal handing over your phone number to law enforcement based on your username, you should only set a username when you want someone to contact you, and then delete it afterward. And each time, always set a different username. Likewise, if you want someone to contact you securely, you can send them your Signal link, and, as soon as they make contact, you can reset the link. If Signal receives a subpoena based on a link that was already reset, it will be impossible for them to look up which account it was associated with. If the subpoena demands that Signal turn over account information based on a phone number, rather than a username, Signal could be forced to hand over the cryptographic hash of the account’s username, if a username is set. It would be difficult, however, for law enforcement to learn the actual username itself based on its hash. If they already suspect a username, they could use the hash to confirm that it’s real. Otherwise, they would have to guess the username using password cracking techniques like dictionary attacks or rainbow tables.

During the meeting, the nodal officer representing the Tamil Nadu government submitted that a bomb threat was sent to multiple schools using ProtonMail, HT has learnt. The police attempted to trace the IP address of the sender but to no avail. They also tried to seek help from the Interpol but that did not materialise either, the nodal officer said. During the meeting, HT has learnt, MeitY representatives noted that getting information from Proton Mail, on other criminal matters, not necessarily linked to Section 69A related issues, is a recurrent problem.

Although Proton Mail is end-to-end encrypted, which means the content of the emails cannot be intercepted and can only be seen by the sender and recipient if both are using Proton Mail, its privacy policy states that due to the nature of the SMTP protocol, certain email metadata — including sender and recipient email addresses, the IP address incoming messages originated from, attachment name, message subject, and message sent and received times — is available with the company. “We condemn a potential block as a misguided measure that only serves to harm ordinary people. Blocking access to Proton is an ineffective and inappropriate response to the reported threats. It will not prevent cybercriminals from sending threats with another email service and will not be effective if the perpetrators are located outside of India,” said ProtonMail in a statement.

“We are currently working to resolve this situation and are investigating how we can best work together with the Indian authorities to do so. We understand the urgency of the situation and are completely clear that our services are not to be used for illegal purposes. We routinely remove users who are found to be doing so and are willing to cooperate wherever possible within international cooperation agreements.”

Before Mr. Kahn’s book, cryptology itself was something of a secret. Despite an explosion in cryptological technology and techniques during the 20th century and the central role they played during World War II, the subject was typically overlooked by historians, if only because their possible sources were still highly classified. “Codebreaking is the most important form of secret intelligence in the world today,” Mr. Kahn wrote in his book’s preface. “Yet it has never had a chronicler.”

Over the course of more than 1,000 pages, along with some 150 pages of notes, Mr. Kahn laid out cryptology’s long history, starting with ancient Egypt 4,000 years ago and proceeding through the French and American revolutions, the innovations wrought by the advent of the telegraph and telephone to the mid-20th century and the dawn of computer-assisted code breaking.

The PQCA endeavors to serve as a pivotal resource for organizations and open-source projects in search of production-ready libraries and packages, fostering cryptographic agility in anticipation of future quantum computing capabilities. Founding members include AWS, Cisco, Google, IBM, IntellectEU, Keyfactor, Kudelski IoT, NVIDIA, QuSecure, SandboxAQ, and the University of Waterloo. […] [T]he PQCA plans to launch the PQ Code Package Project aimed at creating high-assurance, production-ready software implementations of upcoming post-quantum cryptography standards, beginning with the ML-KEM algorithm. By inviting organizations and individuals to participate, the PQCA is poised to play a critical role in the transition to and standardization of post-quantum cryptography, ensuring enhanced security measures in the face of advancing quantum computing technology. You can learn more about the PQCA on its website or GitHub.

jd explains that Crystals-Kyber “was chosen to be the U.S. government’s post-quantum cryptography system of choice last year, but a side-channel attack has been identified. But in the article, NIST says that this is an implementation-specific attack (the reference implementation) and not a vulnerability in Kyber itself.”
From the article:
CRYSTALS-Kyber is the official implementation of the Kyber key encapsulation mechanism (KEM) for quantum-safe algorithm (QSA) and part of the CRYSTALS (Cryptographic Suite for Algebraic Lattices) suite of algorithms. It is designed for general encryption… The KyberSlash flaws are timing-based attacks arising from how Kyber performs certain division operations in the decapsulation process, allowing attackers to analyze the execution time and derive secrets that could compromise the encryption. If a service implementing Kyber allows multiple operation requests towards the same key pair, an attacker can measure timing differences and gradually compute the secret key…

In a KyberSlash1 demo on a Raspberry Pi system, the researchers recovered Kyber’s secret key from decryption timings in two out of three attempts…
On December 30, KyberSlash2 was patched following its discovery and responsible reporting by Prasanna Ravi, a researcher at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and Matthias Kannwischer, who works at the Quantum Safe Migration Center.

But “The arrival of cryptanalytically-relevant quantum computers that will herald the cryptopocalypse will be much sooner — possibly less than a decade.”

It is important to note that all PKI-encrypted data that has already been harvested by adversaries is already lost. We can do nothing about the past; we can only attempt to protect the future…. [T]his is not a threat for the future — the threat exists today. Adversaries are known to be stealing and storing encrypted data with the knowledge that within a few years they will be able to access the raw data. This is known as the ‘harvest now, decrypt later’ threat. Intellectual property and commercial plans — not to mention military secrets — will still be valuable to adversaries when the cryptopocalypse happens.

The one thing we can say with certainty is that it definitely won’t happen in 2023 — probably. That probably comes from not knowing for certain what stage in the journey to quantum computing has been achieved by foreign nations or their intelligence agencies — and they’re not likely to tell us. Nevertheless, it is assumed that nobody yet has a quantum computer powerful enough to run Shor’s algorithm and crack PKI encryption in a meaningful timeframe. It is likely that such computers may become available as soon as three to five years. Most predictions suggest ten years.

Note that a specialized quantum computer designed specifically for Shor does not need to be as powerful as a general-purpose quantum computer — which is more likely to be 20 to 30 years away…. “Quantum computing is not, yet, to the point of rendering conventional encryption useless, at least that we know of, but it is heading that way,” comments Mike Parkin, senior technical engineer at Vulcan Cyber. Skip Sanzeri, co-founder and COO at QuSecure, warns that the threat to current encryption is not limited to quantum decryption. “New approaches are being developed promising the same post-quantum cybersecurity threats as a cryptographically relevant quantum computer, only much sooner,” he said. “It is also believed that quantum advancements don’t have to directly decrypt today’s encryption. If they weaken it by suggesting or probabilistically finding some better seeds for a classical algorithm (like the sieve) and make that more efficient, that can result in a successful attack. And it’s no stretch to predict, speaking of predictions, that people are going to find ways to hack our encryption that we don’t even know about yet.”

Steve Weston, co-founder and CTO at Incrypteon, offers a possible illustration. “Where is the threat in 2023 and beyond?” he asks. “Is it the threat from quantum computers, or is the bigger threat from AI? An analysis of cryptoanalysis and code breaking over the last 40 years shows how AI is used now, and will be more so in the future.”

The article warns that “the coming cryptopocalypse requires organizations to transition from known quantum-vulnerable encryption (such as current PKI standards) to something that is at least quantum safe if not quantum secure.” (The chief revenue officer at Quintessence Labs tells the site that symmetric encryption like AES-256 “is theorized to be quantum safe, but one can speculate that key sizes will soon double.”)

“The only quantum secure cryptography known is the one-time pad.”

Thanks to Slashdot reader wiredmikey for sharing the article.

ASCON was eventually picked as the winner for being flexible, encompassing seven families, energy efficient, speedy on weak hardware, and having low overhead for short messages. NIST also considered that the algorithm had withstood the test of time, having been developed in 2014 by a team of cryptographers from Graz University of Technology, Infineon Technologies, Lamarr Security Research, and Radboud University, and winning the CAESAR cryptographic competition’s “lightweight encryption” category in 2019.

Two of ASCON’s native features highlighted in NIST’s announcement are AEAD (Authenticated Encryption with Associated Data) and hashing. AEAD is an encryption mode that provides confidentiality and authenticity for transmitted or stored data, combining symmetric encryption and MAC (message authentication code) to prevent unauthorized access or tampering. Hashing is a data integrity verification mechanism that creates a string of characters (hash) from unique inputs, allowing two data exchange points to validate that the encrypted message has not been tampered with. Despite ASCON’s lightweight nature, NIST says the scheme is powerful enough to offer some resistance to attacks from powerful quantum computers at its standard 128-bit nonce. However, this is not the goal or purpose of this standard, and lightweight cryptography algorithms should only be used for protecting ephemeral secrets. For more details on ASCON, check the algorithm’s website, or read the technical paper (PDF) submitted to NIST in May 2021.