Mathematician warns NSA may be weakening next-gen encryption ¦ Quantum computers may soon be able to crack encryption methods in use today, so plans are already under way to replace them with new, secure algorithms. Now it seems the US National Security Agency may be undermining that process

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Daniel Bernstein at the University of Illinois Chicago says that the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is deliberately obscuring the level of involvement the US National Security Agency (NSA) has in developing new encryption standards for “post-quantum cryptography” (PQC). He also believes that NIST has made errors – either accidental or deliberate – in calculations describing the security of the new standards. NIST denies the claims.

The mathematical problems we use to protect data are practically impossible for even the largest supercomputers to crack today. But when quantum computers become reliable and powerful enough, they will be able to break them in moments.

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Bernstein, who coined the term post-quantum cryptography in 2003 to refer to these kinds of algorithms, says the NSA is actively engaged in putting secret weaknesses into new encryption standards that will allow them to be more easily cracked with the right knowledge. NIST’s standards are used globally, so flaws could have a large impact.

Bernstein alleges that NIST’s calculations for one of the upcoming PQC standards, Kyber512, are “glaringly wrong”, making it appear more secure than it really is. He says that NIST multiplied two numbers together when it would have been more correct to add them, resulting in an artificially high assessment of Kyber512’s robustness to attack.

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https://archive.ph/2R3rm

Waht it means is that the rich don't want anyone but themselves to have privacy and that they are not going to allow civil liberties to get in the way.