How are cryptographic standards analyzed and why post-quantum algorithms without a quantum computer?
Experts from the Kryptonit company spoke about this and other promising areas of cryptography at the CTCrypt 2024 conference held in June.
This year at the annual CTCrypt symposium even more attention was paid to methods for analyzing cryptographic algorithms and protocols, especially those applying for inclusion in Russian and international standards.
During the discussions it was repeatedly emphasized that adaptation of international standards does not come down to simply replacing foreign algorithms with Russian ones. To do this, it is necessary to work through all stages of interaction between cryptographic components and re-evaluate the reliability of the system. It's almost as difficult as creating a standard from scratch.
Senior research specialist at the cryptography laboratory of the Kryptonit company, Stepan Davydov, analyzed his report such a promising method of cryptanalysis as the study of invariant subspaces of a linear transformation matrix. Such circulant matrices are used in modern block encryption algorithms – American AES and Chinese SM4, as well as in Whirlpool hash functions, GOST 34.11-2018 “Stribog” and some others.
One of the promising areas of cryptography remains the use of elliptic curves. They are used, among other things, to build cryptosystems based on error-correcting codes. These codes are subject to a number of requirements, the combination of which makes it possible to optimize a number of post-quantum cryptographic schemes.
In his report Junior specialist-researcher at the cryptography laboratory of the Kryptonit company, Yuri Shkuratov, spoke about a unique subclass of such codes, for which
the properties of quasi-cyclicity and self-duality are simultaneously satisfied. Such codes help to achieve high security, a relatively small key size and significant savings in computing resources.
A special role at CTCrypt 2024 was given to post-quantum cryptography, the mechanisms of which will remain relevant regardless of whether it is possible to create a sufficiently powerful quantum computer in the foreseeable future. They can be used now to counter attacks using AI, supercomputers, and cloud computing that exploit the shortcomings of classical algorithms.
The section of reports on post-quantum cryptography was led by Ivan Chizhov, Deputy Head of the Cryptography Laboratory for Scientific Work at the Kryptonit company. He noted that although post-quantum cryptography is a relatively young science, the main foundation for it was laid quite a long time ago.
“Computationally complex problems on the basis of which modern post-quantum cryptographic mechanisms are built appeared approximately in the 60-70s of the last century. The first attempts to build cryptosystems on them date back to 1977-1978. However, significant progress in the study of the strength of such cryptosystems has appeared only in the last 15 years. This is due, among other things, to leading Russian specialists in this field. The reports presented in the post-quantum cryptography section, which has already become traditional for the conference, as always demonstrated the high professional level of their authors.” – said Ivan Chizhov.
CTCrypt 2024 concluded with a lecture designed to raise public awareness of such aspects of cryptography as authentication methods, electronic signature protocols, random number generation, and the use of cryptographic tools in business.
