Anyone familiar with ntru?

[Bram Cohen]

On Sun, 6 Jan 2002, John R Levine wrote:

> I have a note from someone telling me how wonderful NTRU's public key
> system is
> 
> a) Are they for real? 

Yes and no, they're for real in that they have some algorithms which do
function as public key cryptography, and there's been some work done
trying to break them which hasn't come up with anything, but no in the
sense that people are worried that there will be some cataclysmic break of
the cryptography which causes the whole system to be completely insecure.

> b) For applications like toll passes, who cares?

That's the main problem, PKI is only called for in specific applications,
and in those the good old reliables - diffie-hellman for encryption and
DSA for signing - are still all that's called for.

(Yeah, yeah, diffie-hellman isn't an 'encryption' algorithm, it's a key
agreement protocol, but it can be combined with symmetric key stuff to
have the effect of public key encryption.)

-Bram Cohen

"Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent"
                                        -- John Maynard Keynes




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