A perspective on standardization of advanced cryptography at NIST
Channel: IACR
Date: 2019-10-05

Presentation by Luís Brandão (NIST) at ACS '19.

Abstract: This talk will present a perspective on the potential role of NIST in standardizing advanced cryptographic schemes and protocols. Traditionally, NIST has focused on “basic” primitives, such as block-ciphers (DES in 1977), hash functions (SHA-1 in 1994), signatures (DSA in 1997), and pair-wise key agreement, public-key encryption and DRBGs (in the 2000s), as well as some “basic” operation modes (e.g., of encryption). Following the revelations about Dual_EC_DRBG in 2013, the NIST cryptographic technology group (CTG) revised the process for developing cryptographic standards, formalizing important principles in NISTIR 7977, such as openness, transparency and integrity. The CTG has experience in driving successful open processes based on public contributions, as used to select the AES (2001) and SHA-3 (2015) standards. Ongoing endeavors include the standardization of lightweight cryptography and post-quantum cryptography primitives, respectively anticipating the Internet of things and quantum computers.

This talk will focus on challenges and opportunities related to two areas with developing potential for standardization: threshold cryptography, with a focus on threshold schemes for cryptographic primitives; and privacy-enhancing cryptography, which includes a plethora of techniques such as secure multiparty computation, zero-knowledge proofs and homomorphic encryption. Finding a proper approach for standardization in both these areas is especially challenging, due to the more complex nature of protocols, with multiple possibilities for interfaces, components, system models, and even security definitions. Overall, this talk also intends to constitute an invitation for stakeholders to engage with NIST in open and transparent processes towards standardization of advanced cryptography.