[Cryptography] On the Impending Crypto Monoculture

[Peter Gutmann]

Ron Garret <ron at flownet.com> writes:

>So what exactly are you advocating here?

I'm not advocating anything, it was just some thoughts.  Although there is one
interesting thing that someone pointed out off-list, until now many standards
groups have slavishly followed anything NIST does, to the point where I'm sick
of hearing "what would NIST want?" in discussions on algorithms (I once
responded with "well, that non-backdoored PRNG will have to go for starters").
This, for the first time, is a wholesale rejection of the "anything that comes
from NIST" philosophy, which I haven't seen before.

(I'm not pro- or anti-NIST, but I think algorithms should be chosen based on
their merits, not "whatever NIST says").

Peter.