NSA says ‘no back doors’ in its new encryption scheme designed to thwart quantum computing
- The National Security Agency is involved in parts of the process to ready new encryption standards for quantum computing, which could break existing standards
- The Biden administration last week unveiled a plan to switch the US economy to quantum-resistant cryptography as much “as is feasible by 2035”
The US is readying new encryption standards that will be so ironclad that even the nation’s top code-cracking agency says it won’t be able to bypass them.
The National Security Agency has been involved in parts of the process but insists it has no way of bypassing the new standards.
“There are no back doors,” said Rob Joyce, the NSA’s director of cybersecurity at the National Security Agency, in an interview. A back door enables someone to exploit a deliberate, hidden flaw to break encryption. An encryption algorithm developed by the NSA was dropped as a federal standard in 2014 amid concerns that it contained a back door.
The new standards are intended to withstand quantum computing, a developing technology that is expected to be able to solve math problems that today’s computers can’t. But it’s also one that the White House fears could allow the encrypted data that girds the US economy – and national security secrets – to be hacked.
Scientists estimate viable quantum computing could arrive anywhere from five to 50 years from now, if ever.
The contest by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, is intended to update the algorithms that underpin widespread public-key cryptography that secures emails, online banking, medical records, access to control systems, some national security work and more. That system, developed in the 1970s, allows for the private exchange of information by relying on publicly accessible algorithms. Announcement of the winners is imminent, officials said.