Re: [gnueval-security] [Richard Stallman] evaluating an encryption program

[Stephen H. Dawson]

Good points.

It does seem like it has much very good potential. It also seems like a
lot to transition the encryption of today to use.

I would like to see some testing they have accomplished. Specifically:
-The process they used to accomplish that testing; and
-The data that is the result of the testing.

This approach would validate what they did -and- how they did it. That
would save volunteer labor from duplicating their effort, by qualifying
what they have accomplished. We can then decide what further evaluations
need to occur to get an objective 3rd party review on this side of their
world.

Thank You,
Stephen H. Dawson
(865) 804-3454
http://www.linkedin.com/in/shdcs


On 11/25/2013 05:10 PM, Christian Grothoff wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Aside from the usual caveats (NTRU is peer-reviewed, but still rather
> new and comparatively untested; there is also the probabilistic
> decryption mentioned already by Stephen), and some obvious disadvantages
> (huge key size, limited availability), I don't know that there is a
> clear security reason for -not- using it.  However, as long as quantum
> cryptoanalysis (not quantum computing with a handful of bits) is not
> real, it is unclear if NTRU is actually going to be stronger than say a
> good curve.  NTRU is better against a system that is hypothetical today.
>  Experts I talked to said that there is a 10% chance that they are real
> in 10-30 years --- and a 89% chance that they won't ever be real.
>
> So the real question is if the GNU packages using NTRU should be trying
> to prepare for the 10% chance in 10-30 years.  MOST should probably not
> do this.  A few crypto libraries (libgcrypt, nettle, GnuPG) may (!) put
> this on their medium-term feature list, but any "normal" package should
> not touch this IMO -- they're much more likely to have security issues
> elsewhere.
>
> My 2 cents
>
> Christian
>
>
> On 11/24/13 21:07, Brandon Invergo wrote:
>> Hi guys,
>>
>> From rms:
>>
>>> Could you please ask people to look at
>>> https://github.com/NTRUOpenSourceProject/ntru-crypto/ and judge
>>> whether it is good for us to use?
>>> They are not considering making it a GNU package, and I doubt that
>>> they ever will; but we might want GNU packages to use it, and that's
>>> the question I'd like people to study.
>>> Please report back to me after you've come to some conclusion.
>> Can someone look into it for us?
>>
>> Thanks!
>> Brandon
>>
>
>
>