[tor-talk] Post Quantum Cryptography

Max senffreund at fastmail.fm
Mon Aug 19 19:55:13 UTC 2013


Hallo Tor-Devs,

considering that D-Wave now claims to have a programmable quantum
computer, wouldn't it be nice for Tor to use post-quantum cyrptography?

http://www.dwavesys.com/en/dw_homepage.html

"A full suite of software tools is included in the D-Wave TwoTM system,
ranging from all the low-level code base for running the hardware
systems, all the way up to applications programming interfaces (APIs)
for a range of languages including Python, C++, SQL, Matlab and Java.
Software support tools, forums and documentation for developers are also
available."

Though from my point of understanding, their computer should only be
capable of solving quantum annealing problems, or problems that can be
reduced to one. Still we seem to be getting closer to the real deal.

Wouldn't it be a nice idea to enable tor to use NTRU encryption? 

http://tbuktu.github.io/ntru/

Unfortunately it is patented, but available open source and free for non
commercial use. Wouldn't it be possible to create a libntru Linux
package that can optionally be used by tor?  This would make Tor a lot
more awesome :) You could even just overlay it with the current system,
just to make things even more nasty :)

The nice thing about NTRU is, that there is no known quantum-solvable
attack and it is much faster than common asymmetric encryption methods.
Of course the possibility of man-in-the-middle attack remains, given
sufficient resources.

Greetings

Max

-- 
  Max
  senffreund at fastmail.fm

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