Received: from sog-mx-3.v43.ch3.sourceforge.com ([172.29.43.193] helo=mx.sourceforge.net) by sfs-ml-2.v29.ch3.sourceforge.com with esmtp (Exim 4.76) (envelope-from ) id 1V6EUW-00025a-Kh for bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net; Mon, 05 Aug 2013 06:42:04 +0000 Received-SPF: pass (sog-mx-3.v43.ch3.sourceforge.com: domain of gmail.com designates 209.85.217.170 as permitted sender) client-ip=209.85.217.170; envelope-from=gmaxwell@gmail.com; helo=mail-lb0-f170.google.com; Received: from mail-lb0-f170.google.com ([209.85.217.170]) by sog-mx-3.v43.ch3.sourceforge.com with esmtps (TLSv1:RC4-SHA:128) (Exim 4.76) id 1V6EUV-00004t-Rj for bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net; Mon, 05 Aug 2013 06:42:04 +0000 Received: by mail-lb0-f170.google.com with SMTP id r10so1767347lbi.29 for ; Sun, 04 Aug 2013 23:41:57 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Received: by 10.152.181.65 with SMTP id du1mr7877970lac.76.1375684917100; Sun, 04 Aug 2013 23:41:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.112.160.104 with HTTP; Sun, 4 Aug 2013 23:41:57 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: References: <51FE9834.7090007@gmail.com> Date: Sun, 4 Aug 2013 23:41:57 -0700 Message-ID: From: Gregory Maxwell To: Peter Vessenes Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 X-Spam-Score: -1.6 (-) X-Spam-Report: Spam Filtering performed by mx.sourceforge.net. See http://spamassassin.org/tag/ for more details. -1.5 SPF_CHECK_PASS SPF reports sender host as permitted sender for sender-domain 0.0 FREEMAIL_FROM Sender email is commonly abused enduser mail provider (gmaxwell[at]gmail.com) -0.0 SPF_PASS SPF: sender matches SPF record -0.1 DKIM_VALID_AU Message has a valid DKIM or DK signature from author's domain 0.1 DKIM_SIGNED Message has a DKIM or DK signature, not necessarily valid -0.1 DKIM_VALID Message has at least one valid DKIM or DK signature X-Headers-End: 1V6EUV-00004t-Rj Cc: Bitcoin Dev Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Preparing for the Cryptopocalypse X-BeenThere: bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.9 Precedence: list List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 05 Aug 2013 06:42:04 -0000 On Sun, Aug 4, 2013 at 8:30 PM, Peter Vessenes wrote: > I studied with Jeffrey Hoffstein at Brown, one of the creators of NTRU. He > told me recently NTRU, which is lattice based, is one of the few (only?) > NIST-recommended QC-resistant algorithms. Lamport signatures (and merkle tree variants that allow reuse) are simpler, faster, trivially implemented, and intuitively secure under both classical and quantum computation (plus unlikely some proposed QC strong techniques they're patent clear). They happen to be the only digital signature scheme that you really can successfully explain to grandma (even for values of grandma which are not cryptographers). They have poor space/bandwidth usage properties, which is one reason why Bitcoin doesn't use them today, but as far as I know the same is so for all post-QC schemes. > Though I question the validity of the claim that ECC is so much more secure than RSA (with appropriate keysizes). The problems are intimately related, but under the best understanding ECC (with suitable parameters) ends up being the maximally hard case of that problem class. I do sometimes worry about breakthroughs that give index-calculus level performance for general elliptic curves, this still wouldn't leave it any weaker than RSA but ECC is typically used with smaller keys.