[philodeon]

No, because if the NSA didn’t already know how to break one of the cryptosystems, their engagement with the contest would have looked much different. They’d genuinely engage with the contestants and provide accurate security margin estimates. They wouldn’t barge in and make illegal procedural demands.

This is called praxeology. One would think that someone who has already been a useful idiot on behalf of the NSA regarding Dual-EC-DRBG might learn to keep their naivete to themselves.

[tptacek]

I don't think you understand the argument you're making here. NSA had no hand in MLKEM itself or even in the line of research that led to MLKEM. Whatever advantage you're claiming they have with respect to MLKEM, I could just as straightforwardly claim they had for McEliece, isogenies, HQC, or UOV.

[philodeon]

But the NSA didn’t throw their weight around in the NIST or IETF processes trying to standardize McEliece, isogenies, HQC, or UOV. They threw their weight around trying to standardize ML-KEM.

And anticipating your “but SIKE turned out to be easily breakable, why didn’t they try to standardize it?” The answer is “it made it shockingly far, but more importantly, SIKE was broken in the unclassified literature, but ML-KEM is broken in the classified literature.” Secrets in unclassified literature are not NOBUS secrets.

[tptacek]

Unfalsifiable just-so argument. The point is that no matter what NIST selected, you could make this argument. Heads, you win, tails, they lose. There's no actual cryptography involved here.

[philodeon]

You do realize that the NSA spends many millions on employing mathematicians, right? And that they wouldn’t keep doing that if all the mathematicians did was get really shit-hot at Kerbal Space Program?

An analysis of the comparative risks of these crypto systems should include “The NSA knows a lot of math they’re not sharing, and if they really really like ML-KEM, that’s concerning even if Ptacek keeps pointing out NSA didn’t write it”

[tptacek]

When you make an argument that is actually somehow rooted in cryptographic research, I'll have something to reply to. This is all just Schneier-Facts(tm) logic.

[philodeon]

To be clear, the Schneier Facts on Dual-EC turned out to be far more accurate than the Ptacek Gut Logic.