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10

This closure is a rather stupid thing, because the Web site is not closed: indeed, there still is a machine, somewhere, which responds to HTTP requests and returns the "we are closed" page. It would have cost zero effort, and zero extra money, to simply let the Web site run and keep on serving PDF files. For crypto development, this means that until the US ...

9

At the time of the competition (I can talk about it, I was there), there was a lot of discussion and various people showed arguments. However, there was never an official, publicly known "board of scores" with totals and definite rules, as the pictures you show seem to purport. It is possible that the NIST people did make something similar internally, but ...

7

I would characterize the service as similar to a trusted time-stamping service. Except they do not do the time-stamping, but just provide the "key". This allows a user to decide what do to with it, such as using it as a private key to sign something, or an HMAC key, proving the signature is "not older" than the timestamp. If the signature is published to a ...

6

As far as I can tell, NIST has only one official document about entropy collection. SP-800-90B. The purpose of NIST Special Publication (SP) 800-90B is to specify the design and testing requirements for entropy sources that can be validated as approved entropy sources by NIST‘s CAVP and CMVP. It essentially defines a bunch of statistical tests to ...

6

Bernstein and Lange says that there has been no progress for prime-field elliptic curves since about 1999, when the NIST curves were chosen. No large class of weak curves were known then, and no large class is known now. Some small classes are known, (as Neves says) the curves with small embedding degree and the anomalous curves (order $n$ equals the prime ...

5

I don't know, but block-cipher based modes of operation have seen a lot more scrutiny. AES in CTR mode has been vetted much more thoroughly than any of those stream ciphers you mention. Moreover, those stream ciphers do not offer compelling benefits over AES-CTR mode. Therefore, it seems to me it would be entirely reasonable to focus on block-cipher based ...

5

It's merely an update to align the hashing algorithms. There are in fact no real "consequences" which might have any negative impact as the v2.1 schemes are still supported. The positive impact is the alignment with FIPS 180-4. To quote the revision history at page 59 of "PKCS #1 v2.2: RSA Cryptography Standard": Version 2.2 updates the list of allowed ...

4

$\pi$ is the transcendental number 3.1415926... It's there in the formula to show this specific number was not chosen with a specific cryptographical backdoor in mind; it seems unlikely that anyone was able to select the value of $\pi$ (unless Carl Sagan was correct, of course :-)

4

The cornerstone of the handshake security is that the Finished messages, sent under the protection of the newly exchanged key (for encryption and MAC), contain hash values computed over all the handshake messages exchanged so far, including the list of cipher suites and all other parameters. As long as client and server don't negotiate the use of a cipher ...

4

Q1: Why are these tests stroked out? These tests are stroked out on pages 57-58 of the current FIPS 140-2 because they are no longer part of the current FIPS 140-2 standard, since Change Notice 2 of 2002 December third, where these pages belong. My guess for the rationale of removing these tests is that It was realized that the very principle ...

3

In addition to the earlier remarks about the missing background of your question please also consider that TLS and IKEv2 are actually not just a single authentication and key exchange protocol but rather a framework that supports many different AKA protocols. Let us use TLS as an example. In TLS you have the concept of ciphersuites and they allow you to ...

3

Since you do not describe why TLS Handshake and IKE are appropriate in your situation, and as long as you don't describe your situation, it's hard to really help you. Also, you haven't stated if it's only IKE that's not appropriate, or if that also includes IKEv2 (which improved the IKE protocol). Therefore, I'll simply assume you meant both. As an ...

2

I wonder why anyone would choose to rely on a source of true random numbers fraught with questions that will ultimately have no provable - or perhaps even satisfactory - answer. There are at least a couple of companies that sell generators that provide high quality true random numbers. Having a generator on-site and available real-time allows the necessary ...

2

I cannot see it having a negative effect, only a positive effect. Let's look at the Reddit AMA of Glenn Greenwald and the relevant comment: There are hundreds of encryption standards compromised by the program the Guardian, NYT and PP all reported on. I have never seen any list of those standards and don't have it. If I did have it, I would publish it ...

2

This closure could have an unintended effect on security. If a researcher was attempting to use a NIST resource, he or she might turn to a third party due to the unavailability of the NIST site. This may spur awareness, interest, or growth in other international standards bodies, such as ISO, or even to form an ECRYPT-III effort. If that third party turns ...

2

The rationale for no longer mandating these tests include: These tests are generally not useful against most FIPS 140-2 approved random number generators. These tests can be useful against some kind of entropy sources. These tests give frequent false positives every few thousandth block of truely random stream will fail the test. Some entropy sources are ...

1

Germany's BSI has produced AIS 31 that includes requirements on Physical True RNGs (PTRNGs). It is designed to fill a gap in the Common Criteria standard. Chapter 4 describes pre-defined classes for physical true, non-physical true, deterministic and hybrid random number generators. ... The basic concepts and evaluation criteria are illustrated by ...

1

This is more a legal question than a cryptographic one. Therefore I would like to note that I can not provide any legal advice and that you should ask a lawyer about the details of your individual case. But, to share my point of view which I base on my personal experience: If a company owns a patent (on an encryption technology, or anything else), they ...

1

I agree that Gilles' interpretation in the comments is the only one that makes sense; the RFC clearly contains an editorial error, and should read either (emphasis indicates corrections): "If the value calculated by the authentication server matches the value calculated by the client, then the HOTP value is validated." or: "If the value received by ...

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