[tor-dev] Proposing "Post-Quantum safe handshake implementation" as GSoc Project

[isis agora lovecruft]

Yawning Angel transcribed 3.0K bytes:
> On Sat, 18 Feb 2017 14:07:40 +0530
> Jaskaran Singh <jvsg1303 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'm particularly interested to work on making TOR Handshakes
> > Post-Quantum Safe. I feel that this should be implemented at the
> > earliest because adversaries could store the network traffic and
> > decrypt it later on using Quantum Computers when they're invented.
> 
> So there's good news and bad news.
> 
> The good news is that PQ handshake stuff will happen, sooner rather
> than later.
> 
> The bad news is that, work on it is on going, and it does not make a
> good GSOC project because, the bulk of the implementation work will
> likely happen before the summer.

It will?

> > 2. Implement the NewHope-Simple algorithm[1] because we'll not be able
> > to use the Vanilla NewHope as it is protected by some patents. I
> > wasn't able to find any implementation of NewHope Simple. So can the
> > Vanilla NewHope Implementation be tweaked to convert it into NewHope
> > Simple? Or would we have to write it from ground up? I don't know
> > about the patent laws regarding it.
> 
> I haven't talked to Peter in a while (and will ask him after I send
> this), but I am not aware of any patent claims against the vanilla
> NewHope algorithm (and the NewHope-Simple paper does not mention this
> at all either).

Sorry, I'm being deliberately vague about this because I don't want to feed
the patent trolls or provide a weapon to anyone who wants to fight against
good crypto, but the patent exists, and it affects nearly all lattice-based
handshakes.  NewHope simple is not affected.

My (ongoing, but Nick asked me to stop last summer until there was funding
for it) work on integrating standard NewHope is here:

https://gitweb.torproject.org/user/isis/tor.git/log/?h=feature/rebelalliance

Best,
-- 
 ♥Ⓐ isis agora lovecruft
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