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by some_furry 24 days ago
Read https://soatok.blog/2026/04/13/hybrid-constructions-the-post... for a longer explanation.

The main thing I want to stress here is: I'm not anti-hybrid. Some people are. They tend to argue that less code / complexity is better, but you'll want to find one of them to ask directly.

1 comments

So the argument boils down to

1. A mathematical attack against the PQC candidates would also break ECC (I have no ability to judge this claim).

2. Implementation bugs also exist in classical implementations.

#2 seems questionable to me unless you think the same implementation bugs will exist in Curve25519 and whatever PQC algorithm you are using. If the concern is side-channel attacks then that is irrelevant to a HNDL attack. But for most communications the cost of a HNDL attack being executed several years minimum from now is far lower than the cost of an implementation bug in ML-KEM breaking their security today. Whereas Curve25519 is very well tested in its standard implementations.

You mostly got it, yeah. Point 1, ECC is only also broken after Q-Day.

Hybrids obviously help if you believe Q-Day is far into the future, or never coming.

But if you take Q-Day happening as possible in our lifetime, the HNDL threat means data being encrypted today depends entirely on PQ security in the long run (since breaking EC with a Quantum Computer has an attack cost of like 2^30 or so instead of 2^120 or so).

So it seems like it comes down to a question of risk and cost. If your threat model is that it is much more costly for your communications to be decrypted today vs in 10 years then hybrid is a good strategy.