[nycbug-talk] Elliptic Curve Backdoor? [was] RSA/DSA for encryption: has it's time come?

[Isaac (.ike) Levy]

Morning All,

It appears more likely that ECC standards were backdoored by the NSA, 
with NIST involvement (or lack thereof?).

I hate to re-post slashdot, but the summary is concise:
http://it.slashdot.org/story/13/09/11/1224252/are-the-nist-standard-elliptic-curves-back-doored

The trick, it seems, is in some random seed numbers which aren't random 
at all:
"The random numbers in these curve parameters were supposed to be 
selected via a "verifiably random" process...
Unfortunately it turns out the actual inputs used were opaque 256 bit 
numbers, chosen ad-hoc with no justifications provided."

Good times.

--
If anyone sees relevant updates to this ongoing issue, please feel free 
to post to this thread!

Best,
.ike