This is way more of a self-promo blog post than an article, but it’s also along the lines of Signal or Apple announcing their own successes in cryptography.
I also appreciate their clarification that post-quantum encryption is a guess, not a sure thing. Actually, they’re much more blunt than that:
post-quantum cryptography can be compared with a remedy against the illness that nobody has, without any guarantee that it will work. The closest analogy in the history of medicine is snake oil.
Good on them for saying that.
But then on expounding with minimal jargon… At least, as far as explaining cryptography can be done that way.
The guy literally printed the algorithm in a book to show that the first amendment protects encryption math. Luckily the justices at the time were definitely pro first amendment. Unlucky that they used first amendment to justify citizens United
post-quantum cryptography can be compared with a remedy against the illness that nobody has, without any guarantee that it will work. The closest analogy in the history of medicine is snake oil.
Good on them for saying that.
A “remedy against the illness that nobody has” is a good analogy, but it is important to note that it’s an illness which there is a consensus we are likely to eventually have and a remedy that there is good reason to believe will be effective.
It isn’t a certainty that there will ever be a cryptographically relevant post-quantum computer, and it also isn’t a certainty that any of the post-quantum algorithms (as with most classical cryptography) which exist today won’t turn out to be breakable even by yesterday’s computers. The latter point is why it’s best to deploy post-quantum cryptography in a hybrid construction such that the system remains secure even if one of the primitives turns out to be breakable.
That said, I think it is totally wrong to call PQC snake oil because that term in the context of cryptography specifically means that a system is making dishonest claims: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_oil_(cryptography)
I didn’t post the part after the “snake oil” quote because my post was getting a bit long but yeah, they basically agree with you. I also get mild ESL vibes (the phrasing on the title is a little off, and I believe a couple of the developers are Russian-born) so I don’t think they were trying to be too inaccurate.
Maybe closer to trying to get ready for a new pandemic that is likely to happen, but caused by a virus that doesn’t exist
I should’ve made clear in my comment that, aside from a bit of imperfect English and incorrect use of the term snake oil, I think this is an excellent blog post.
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