Great link for those looking to learn more about practical applications for Quantum Cryptography = https://wizardforcel.gitbooks.io/practical-cryptography-for-developers-book/content/quantum-safe-cryptography.html

Showing all of the algorithms that Cloudflare supports for DNSSEC (not ed448 ; few if any resolvers support ed448 - algorithm448 / naturally uses shake256 as well // the parameters of that curve seem to be problematic [also the strength of ed448 could pose an issue as well given U.S. export restrictions + that of other countries]

https://community.cloudflare.com/t/support-for-ed448-dnssec-signature-algorithm/71494

Edwards' Curve Resources

There are plenty of resources out there for ed25519, but it seems that there are few resources dedicated to ed448, so this list will make a concerted

1. IETF Outline / Guidance for ed448 Deployment (as well as ed25519)

2. Async SSH (allows for ed448 to be used ; this is not enabled with OpenSSH to the best of my knowledge) = https://asyncssh.readthedocs.io/en/stable/#interactive-input

3. https://github.com/otrv4/otrv4/blob/master/otrv4.md

4. BIP 32 With ed25519 = https://cardano.org/assets/Ed25519_BIP.pdf

4a. BIP32 with ed25519 keys ; GUI interface included here = https://superdarkbit.github.io/nano-bip32-ed25519/ (should look closely at the spec to ensure that these keys are being generated in a secure manner here ; there is nuance in the generation hierarchical deterministic key wallets when using Edwards' curves vs. secg curves)

Source = http://cryptowiki.net/index.php?noscript=The_Double_Ratchet_Algorithm

(Double Ratchet Encryption Algorithm) <—- this is what Signal uses (and why people claim that Signal is so super secure

Original technique borrowed from 'off the record' encryption (Moxie has stated as much)

Blake3 Specs = https://github.com/BLAKE3-team/BLAKE3-specs/blob/master/blake3.pdf

GitHub link is to the repo with Blake3.

Bao Function (part of Blake3); this allows you to take a 'slice' of a file that's already been encoded with Blake3 and determine whether the full file itself has been encoded with Blake3

HC-256 Design Specifications = https://eprint.iacr.org/2004/092.pdf

Lurch - Brings OMEMO Encryption (double ratcheting) to libpurple

https://github.com/hardenedvault/lurch

Two Interesting E-mail Lists

Both located at moderncrypto.org

Schnorr Claims to Have Destroyed the RSA Cryptosystem

Seriously - https://eprint.iacr.org/2021/232.pdf

The final sentence in the Abstract is, "This destroys the RSA cryptosystem"

This is profound if true. I'm obviously not qualified to audit Schnorr's work, but we can rest assured that peers in cryptography academia are pouring over this paper as we speak.

The paper is a legitimate eprint and various professionals have contacted Schnorr to confirm that he indeed is the true publisher of the paper (and that this isn't a hoax / someone looking to rile up bullshit).

'

Initial Reception From Various Individuals

Truthfully, the reception has been extremely skeptical with most requesting Schnorr to provide concrete proofs showing RSA being broken in practice.

This feels reasonable.

We'll have to see how this one evolves over the next day or so.

To claim that he has broken RSA is profound, if true. This is an obviously well-known cryptographer that has earned respect for his contributions in the field of cryptography.

So one would assume that he values his credibility and name as much as you would expect from someone of his stature. To make the claim that the "RSA cryptosystem is destroyed" is a ludicrous statement to make if he truly has no proofs.

I'm going to optimistically assume that Schnorr has additional information / proofs / breakdowns to rebut.

If not, then I'm sure there will be a response paper published in a few days, at most. This is extremely interesting as a spectator to be honest

Picnic Signature Specification (optimized) = https://github.com/IAIK/Picnic

bcrypto library = https://github.com/bcoin-org/bcrypto

Using PGP Encryption With NodeJS = https://www.loginradius.com/blog/async/using-pgp-encryption-with-nodejs/

Aggregatable Distributed Key Generation

Not sure how much novelty there is in the construction of this protocol, but there was a preprint shared today, posted at this URL =

A less 'academic' write-up of the scheme was published on one of the team member's blogs here = https://www.benthamsgaze.org/2021/03/24/aggregatable-distributed-key-generation/

General Thoughts

The use here is obvious, but I'm still not sure if it has been all the way justified that this scheme's construction is uniquely different than what already exists currenlty.

Example From Ethereum: https://github.com/herumi/bls

There are other examples if you look deep enough on the internet (with better explanations on how they're supposed to work within the context of something that many would consider to be valuable at this point in time [i.e., blockchain])

Publisher of That Reddit Post

Hmm, we start to get interesting results when we track down certain individuals, don't we?

url = https://www.reddit.com/user/sjmurdoch/

Pseudo-Useful Contributions to the Blockchain Space

Specifically this can be seen here in this whitepaper by Alin Tomescu: https://people.csail.mit.edu/alinush/papers/catena-sp2017.pdf

What the Paper is About

(you won't believe this idea here)

The paper goes into somewhat of a droning shpill at its outset about 'equivocation' on the blockchain (think the term that they're looking for here would be better encapsulated within the idea of 'finality').

They make the correct deduction that if one were to anchor an identity / concept to an underlying blockchain (i.e., 'Bitcoin'), then one would be forced to download the entire chain (in order to retain the property of trustlessness conferred by Bitcoin)

So (rather than fixing Bitcoin - because nobody ever wants to fucking do that), this individuals proposed to create "logs" that abstract from the Bitcoin network by building another layer over top of it in some sort of capcity.

No Trustless Consensus - No Benefit

The benefit of blockchain = trustless consensus.

Do anything that mitigates, reduces, hampers, etc., that process should be considered something that's not wholly blockchain.

Scrape: Scalable Randomness Attested by Public Entities

Interesting, published by IOHK (under Cardano if you're familiar with crypto projects).

URL = https://cryptorating.eu/whitepapers/Cardano/216.pdf

GnuPG v2.3.0 Beta Testing

You can check out the actual release for GnuPG 2.3.0 (beta) here = https://github.com/gpg/gnupg/releases/tag/Beta-2.3.0-beta1655

There are a ton of modifications that have been made to how this tool performs PGP encryption, in general.

Was able to build the project w relative ease.

Definitely very cool to use ; much needed update over what we were used to w prior GPG versions.

Ed448 Comes to PGP

This is a welcome addition to PGP (as this provides the strength of 10k+ length RSA keys).

Some notable additions:

1. 'Experimental database' daemon

2. tpmd2d (new daemon to physically bind keys to the local machine)

3. ed25519 made the default algorithm

4. Supports AEAD encryption mode using OCB or EAX

5. Supprots creation of EdDSA certs as well

6. Enhanced ssh-agent support

7. Telesec Signature Card v2.0 support

8. PIV card support

9. Smartcard support

10. LDAP authentication support (this is unique)

11. "gpg-card" as a tool to interface w other smart cards of all types

Among some other additions (see those here = https://github.com/gpg/gnupg/blob/master/NEWS)

I've already taken the liberty of installing all of the necessary components on my computer first from their repo (very easy to do, will probably roll this in a Docker fiole in the near future and release that to everyone in this channel so that you can have that too).

Needed to tweak a couple of things to get ed448 signatures going (had a previous version of gpgconf + gpg-agent already pre-installed, so had to ensure that the correct modules were being referenced). Overall though - smooth experience.

This is beta, so please keep that in mind (they'll remind you of that frequently though.