Episode 1: Post-Quantum TLS With KEMs Instead of Signatures!

TLS 1.3 has been widely praised as a major upgrade to the Transport
Layer Security protocol responsible for securing the majority of
Web traffic. But one area in which TLS 1.3 seems to be lacking is
its potential for resistance to attacks that utilize quantum
computing – computers that, theoretically, could factor the
products of large primes and solve the discrete logarithm problem
in relatively short periods of time, significantly affecting the
security of TLS 1.3. Today however, we’re discussing an interesting
new paper, to be published at this year’s ACM CCS, which introduces
KEMTLS: a modified version of TLS 1.3 that uses Key Encapsulation
Mechanisms, or KEMs, instead of signatures for server
authentication, thereby providing a sort of “post-quantum TLS”. But
what even are KEMs? Are quantum computers even a thing that we
should be worried about? On the first ever episode of Cryptography
FM, we’ll be hosting Dr. Douglas Stebila and PhD Candidate Thom
Wiggers to discuss these questions and more. Dr. Douglas Stebila is
an Associate Professor of cryptography in the Department of
Combinatorics & Optimization at the University of Waterloo in
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. His research focuses on improving the
security of key exchange protocols and Internet cryptography
protocols such as TLS and SSH, including the development of
quantum-resistant solutions. His previous work on the integration
of elliptic curve cryptography in TLS has been deployed on hundreds
of millions of web browsers and servers worldwide. Thom Wiggers is
a PhD Candidate at the Institute of Computing and Information
Sciences at Radboud University in The Netherlands. He is working on
the interactions of post-quantum cryptography with protocols, under
the supervision of Dr. Peter Schwabe, who is also a co-author of
the research work that we’re going to discuss today. Links to
discussed papers: * Post-quantum TLS without handshake signatures
(https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/534) * Big Other: Surveillance
Capitalism and the Prospects of an Information Civilization
(https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2594754) *
Supersingular isogeny key exchange for beginners
(https://eprint.iacr.org/2019/1321) * Clone Detection in Secure
Messaging: Improving Post-Compromise Security in Practice
(https://cispa.saarland/group/cremers/downloads/papers/CFKN2020-messaging_cloning.pdf)
Music composed by Toby Fox and performed by Sean Schafianski
(https://seanschafianski.bandcamp.com/). Special Guests: Douglas
Stebila and Thom Wiggers.