Astra mortemque praestare gradatim

On Wed, May 27, 2026, 1:48 PM Simon Josefsson <simon=
[email protected]> wrote:

> Nadim Kobeissi <[email protected]> writes:
>
> > Signature schemes do not have the same compromise profile as key
> > agreement schemes (I wrote about this [1]).
> ...
> > [1] https://symbolic.software/blog/2026-04-13-hybrid-constructions/
>
> "Soatok’s central observation is one that deserves wider uptake: the
> harvest-now-decrypt-later (HNDL) threat that motivates hybrid KEMs has
> no analogue for signatures."
>
> Repeating that statement doesn't make it true.  The analog motivation
> for doing PQ hybrids is Man-In-The-Middle attacks.  If your non-hybrid
> PQ signature has a weakness (e.g., implementation bug), it facilitate
> man-in-the-middle's.
>

The only way to achieve that is to have a quantum computer at the time of
attack

>
> There were times when man-in-the-middle's were as common as
> harvest-now-decrypt-later are today.  I believe that MITM's are
> generally worse than HNDL attacks.  Adding a pre-PQ signature in hybrid
> with new PQ systems is low cost compared to the risks.  We did that for
> PQ key agreement based on the HNDL argument.  We should do the same for
> PQ authentication with the MITM argument.
>
> /Simon
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