[some_furry]

> In the past NSA has weakened encryption standards, for example NSA madified DES standard.

They made DES more secure against differential cryptanalysis (a method that was classified at the time DES was being designed). Sure, the whole "make the keys 56-bit instead of 64-bit" is a weakening, but differential cryptanalysis would have broken the entire fucking cipher if they didn't prevent it by selecting a secure S-box.

> The NSA pushed backdoored design of Dual_EC_DRBG was standardized in NIST SP 800-90A.

Correct, which another threat actor used in a backdoor by replacing the public key.

I'm not arguing that NIST isn't vulnerable to NSA influence. I'm arguing that they are not the same entity and do not have the same goals or incentives.

I'm not an NSA defender. https://furry.engineer/@soatok/116854899284071513

[leonidasrup]

This is exactly according the NOBUS ("Nobody But Us") principle. With weak S-box, anybody could break DES, with strong S-box only NSA could bruteforce DES (in the 1980s).

"

Michael Hayden, a former NSA Director, has since acknowledged the concept of NOBUS:

    You look at a vulnerability through a different lens if even with the vulnerability it requires substantial computational power or substantial other attributes and you have to make the judgment who else can do this? If there's a vulnerability here that weakens encryption but you still need four acres of Cray computers in the basement in order to work it you kind of think "NOBUS" and that's a vulnerability we are not ethically or legally compelled to try to patch – it's one that ethically and legally we could try to exploit in order to keep Americans safe from others."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOBUS

In general we can asume that NOBUS applies to everything NSA publishes or supports. If not in direct algorithmic weakness, then in weakened parameters or in selection of algorithms that are hard to implement in secure way without specialized hardware support (side channel attacks of AES, sensitivity of DSA to quality of random number generator, hard to correctly implement NIST curves - generated by NSA).