[Cryptography] From Nicaragua to Snowden - why no national standards should be considered in cryptosec

[Thierry Moreau]

On 27/02/16 10:35 PM, Ben Laurie wrote:
>
> On 27 February 2016 at 17:04, Stephen Farrell <stephen.farrell at cs.tcd.ie
> <mailto:stephen.farrell at cs.tcd.ie>> wrote:
>
>     There's that. But "national" is also no good as a label, as
>     AES is national and some national algs are less well vetted/known
>     than others.
>
>
> Ah, but AES is from the right nation.
>
> Its a crazy idea, I know, but there might be some nations who are not so
> keen on other nations mandating their crypto.
>
> IETF has pretensions of being worldwide, but really, its all about the
> US, with grudging support of their close allies.
>
> Is there _any_ non-national crypto?
>

The algorithms developed by academic contributions, often improved by 
academic contributions unrelated to the original work.

A good portion of public key cryptography algorithms would fall into 
this category (DSA / ECDSA being the most obvious counterexample).

For hash functions and symmetric encryption "Your mileage may vary" e.g. 
the set of ASHA and AES competitors may include algorithms sufficiently 
peer-reviewed with some independence from the right nation (who managed 
the competitions).

- Thierry