Computerphile
1 HN recommender · recommended in 4 months, 2021–2025
12:24 · 554K views · Feb 15, 2018
Dr Mike Pound explains the suspected backdoor in the Dual_EC_DRBG random number generator and how elliptic curve constants could let someone predict its output.
HN points to it as an intuitive explanation of how NIST standardized a backdoored generator.
4 comments from Hacker News
I recommend this video by Computerphile - He talks about how NIST may have been pressured into enforcing compromised (backdoored?) cryptography methods as a standard - Dual_EC_DRBG to be exact. He also gives a super cool/intuitive breakdown on how this came to be. It will definitely grow some food for thought. this video
Computerphile video discussing the mathematics around how such a number could have been used in a practical way. this video [LINK] When people say, “Don’t roll your own crypto,” it’s because the field is littered with footguns and (to stretch an analogy) guns in cryptography launch explosives.
Computerphile[1] did a video about the specifics of the backdoor in Dual EC DRBG. As i understand it, the hackers replaced a magic number Q with a different value than the standards compliant one, where they had pre-computed P. [1]: this video
Long story short is that we don't know for sure, but there are some possibilities that's makes it plausible this video