Re: [Opensc-devel] ECDSA, engine_pkcs11, libp11 and OpenSSL

[Ludovic R. <lud...@gm...>]

2013/9/20 Douglas E. Engert <dee...@an...>:
>
>
> On 9/20/2013 2:45 AM, Jean-Michel Pouré - GOOZE wrote:
>> Le jeudi 19 septembre 2013 à 15:31 -0500, Douglas E. Engert a écrit :
>>> Modifications to engine_pkcs11 and libp11 to support ECDSA
>>> are available at github for testing, and I am looking for
>>> comments.
>>
>> This is nice to have them on board.
>>
>> My only comment is that, according to rumors, Elliptic curves are
>> reported broken by NSA crypto-analysts. The reason is that Elliptic
>> curves offer more space for mathematics and are quite new, offering
>> space for discoveries in factorization.
>
> I have not heard those rumors. I have heard there are some curves,
> that should not be used.   On the contrary, there is more discussion
> about breaking RSA in the next few years and the industry better be in
> a position to have a replacement implemented, i.e. ECDSA and ECDH.

Maybe Jean-Michel is revering to this article "La NSA est suspectée
d'avoir altéré un standard cryptographique" [1] (in French) that link
to a New York Times article "Government Announces Steps to Restore
Confidence on Encryption Standards" [2].

If we can't trust NIST any more then we can move to "the other side"
by using the GHOST cryptosystems [3] from the Soviet Union.

Bye

[1] http://www.numerama.com/magazine/26979-la-nsa-est-suspectee-d-avoir-altere-un-standard-cryptographique.html
[2] http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/government-announces-steps-to-restore-confidence-on-encryption-standards/?_r=0
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOST

-- 
 Dr. Ludovic Rousseau