[Cryptography] NSA’s FAQs Demystify the Demise of Suite B

Francisco Corella fcorella at pomcor.com
Tue Feb 16 23:37:32 EST 2016


> > Another omission in the CNSA Suite
> > is the requirement to provide forward secrecy in key establishment
> > that was present in Suite B.  Surprisingly, this comes at a time when
> > forward secrecy is becoming the norm on the web.
> 
> No surprise there.
> 
> No FS means that NSA's attack division only have to key-break one
> communication in order to break all the traffic between two people;
> whereas with FS they have to break each communication separately.

The CNSA Suite, like its predecessor Suite B, are for National
Security Systems.  The NSA wants to defend those systems, not attack
them.  It has nothing to gain from being able to compromise them, and
much to loose from them being compromised by adversaries.  That's why
I find it surprising that the CNSA Suite drops the forward secrecy
requirement.

Francisco



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