Hi Mark,
This replies to your three messages of 7/14/26 00:15, 14:41, and
15:23.
On 7/14/26 00:15, [email protected] wrote:
I'm very confused by this whole crusade of yours. What does
"defense in depth" mean formally? I can't help but read it as
"arbitrary extra steps of questionable value". There are likely many
such steps that could be added to any cryptographic protocol. It's
unclear to me the value of any of them.
It is reasonable to be confused; this discussion crosses standards
process, lattice proofs, RNG engineering, protocol design, and
declassified history. I do not accept the "crusade" framing. I am
raising a specific issue in ML-KEM as used by IETF protocols, especially
TLS.
"Defense in depth" is a term of art. NIST defines it as an information
security strategy using variable barriers across multiple layers [18].
In cryptographic terms, the related idea appears in work on hedged
public-key encryption: robustness against randomness failures [19].
Here the defense-in-depth step is not arbitrary. It is the original
Kyber step that NIST removed. FIPS 203 Appendix C says Kyber hashed the
initial randomness in ML-KEM.Encaps as `m <- H(m)` to "safeguard
against the use of flawed randomness generation processes"; FIPS 203
then says this was removed because ML-KEM requires approved randomness
generation [0]. The third-round Kyber submission had this step [1].
So the dispute is not about adding a random new step. It is about NIST
removing an existing step and replacing it with an assumption: use of a
NIST-approved RBG. The TLS drafts do not state, explain, or require that
same approved-RBG condition.
Does hashing yield a tighter advantage bound anywhere? Or can we
quantify the benefit of additional computation here in any way? If
not, then why should we consider adding in arbitrary steps of
questionable value?
The benefit is not a tighter lattice reduction. The benefit is
destroying hidden algebraic structure in `m` before `m` is encrypted and
then recovered by the decapsulating peer.
NIST itself wrote:
"As others have pointed out before, hashing m in the ML-KEM's spec
only protects the KEM, the whole system is still considered
compromised when other crypto functions rely on the security of the
broken or attacker-controlled RBG." [2]
That is exactly the point: hashing `m` protects the KEM from this class
of failure. It does not solve every RNG problem. It does close this
peer-recoverable `m` oracle.
The cost tradeoff is simple:
- Kyber with the hash;
- ML-KEM without the hash;
- ML-KEM with the hash restored.
The 2023 pqc-forum discussion put the hash overhead on the order of
hundreds to low thousands of cycles, depending on platform and parameter
set [14]. That is small compared with performing the whole ML-KEM
computation while also exposing a useful oracle on structured RNG
output and achieving no security against the relevant Adversary.
Incredibly the basic concept that a peer with the secret key can recover
`m` was the subject of a multi-day discussion on this list!
I'm also deeply confused by your references to the approx SIVP
reduction. Has this been used for ML-KEM? ...
I think I see the disconnect when I cite [8] and so [9] appears
responsive. My point with [8] is not that either citation proves ML-KEM
is broken.
Part of the point is that the proofs and estimates do not remove the
need for conservative engineering, especially when the conservative step
was already present in Kyber.
The 2022 pqc-forum MATZOV thread is relevant as context, not as proof
that ML-KEM is broken. The thread shows how security estimates depend on
modeling assumptions, memory-cost models, and concrete attack-cost
quantification [26]. Standards should make such assumptions visible
instead of letting implementers infer more than the proofs or estimates
say.
This is the other part of the point of mentioning [8] about "provable
security": what exactly does the proof cover, what assumptions does it
require, and where are the gaps between theory, standards, and
deployment? Standards sit between the mathematics and the engineering.
This is where mathematical assumptions should become implementer
guidance, and where engineering failure modes should feed back into
conservative protocol advice.
A key practical question is: when the hash was present in Kyber, were
you satisfied with the proofs offered for Kyber? If so, restoring the
hash does not create a speculative new cryptographic object. It restores
a conservative step already reviewed during the NIST process.
A second key practical question is: do you find NIST's motivation to
remove it to be sufficiently well motivated if you are meanwhile asking
for a game based proof?
FIPS 203 says ML-KEM.KeyGen and ML-KEM.Encaps require fresh random bytes
from an approved RBG, as prescribed in SP 800-90A, SP 800-90B, and
SP 800-90C, with security strength at least 128 bits for ML-KEM-512,
192 bits for ML-KEM-768, and 256 bits for ML-KEM-1024 [0][15][16][17].
As shorthand examples, the SP 800-90A DRBG cases are:
- ML-KEM-512-Hash_DRBG
- ML-KEM-512-HMAC_DRBG
- ML-KEM-512-CTR_DRBG
- ML-KEM-768-Hash_DRBG
- ML-KEM-768-HMAC_DRBG
- ML-KEM-768-CTR_DRBG
- ML-KEM-1024-Hash_DRBG
- ML-KEM-1024-HMAC_DRBG
- ML-KEM-1024-CTR_DRBG
These are shorthand and not new algorithm names. They illustrate what
FIPS 203 relies on: ML-KEM at the relevant security level with a
NIST-approved RBG of sufficient strength, plus the relevant SP 800-90B
entropy-source and SP 800-90C construction requirements. There may be
other approved RBG constructions, including validated designs ultimately
backed by hardware devices. But a raw platform interface or device is
not automatically the same thing as a NIST-approved RBG.
The TLS drafts under discussion do not specify ML-KEM-768-Hash_DRBG,
ML-KEM-768-HMAC_DRBG, ML-KEM-768-CTR_DRBG, or any equivalent approved
RBG construction with the required emphasis. Real software may use
getentropy(), getrandom(), /dev/random, /dev/urandom, /dev/hwrng, OS
get-random-bytes API calls, wrappers around them, or library policy [20]
[21][22][23]. Some of these choices may be excellent. Some software
correctly uses the operating system CSPRNG interface. Some software has
historically used hardware RNG devices more directly. Some software
mixes these paths or delegates the choice to a crypto library. These
choices are still not the same as carrying over the approved-RBG
condition NIST used to justify removing the hash.
If an implementation does not meet the FIPS 203 randomness requirements,
NIST's rationale for removing the hash no longer applies. If an
approved RBG ever has hidden structure, the removed hash is also no
longer present as internal defense in depth. Those are the two gaps the
TLS drafts should explain.
This matters beyond these two TLS drafts. Many current and future IETF
documents will use ML-KEM directly or indirectly. RFC 9794 gives hybrid
terminology, and RFC 9958 gives PQC engineering guidance, but neither
replaces putting the relevant ML-KEM security assumptions into the
documents that instantiate ML-KEM [24][25].
My requested text is modest:
- cite the third-round Kyber submission [1];
- cite FIPS 203 Appendix C, where NIST documents removing `m <- H(m)`
[0];
- state the FIPS 203 approved-RBG requirement [0][15][16][17];
- state that `m` is recovered by the decapsulating peer;
- recommend restoring Kyber's hashing of `m`, as defense in depth
against hidden-structure RBG failures;
- cite Dual_EC_DRBG as the public standardized example [3][4].
This does not turn the TLS draft into a FIPS certification scheme and it
is appropriate because the TLS draft is _not_ a FIPS certification draft
but the IETF's _consensus_ on deploying pure ML-KEM in TLS. It should at
least tell implementers what NIST's security rationale assumes, it must
tell it what is _required_ and what Kyber originally did to reduce risk
is literally in FIPS 203, so quoting it doesn't even require a new
reference!
It probably also makes sense to edit the text to make clear that these
are the combinations that NIST says would meet the requirements where a
hash isn't needed:
- ML-KEM-512-Hash_DRBG
- ML-KEM-512-HMAC_DRBG
- ML-KEM-512-CTR_DRBG
- ML-KEM-768-Hash_DRBG
- ML-KEM-768-HMAC_DRBG
- ML-KEM-768-CTR_DRBG
- ML-KEM-1024-Hash_DRBG
- ML-KEM-1024-HMAC_DRBG
- ML-KEM-1024-CTR_DRBG
On 7/14/26 14:41, [email protected] wrote:
That webpage does not answer my question. I am currently
interpreting "defense in depth" as a synonym for "arbitrary
modifications to a cryptographic scheme of unquantifiable value".
...
For example, if pre-hashing m yielded tighter advantage bounds in
the IND-NSA-TOOK-MY-RNG game, that would be a modification of
quantifiable value.
Recovering the internal RNG state is quantifiable and the literature is
fairly clear. I am happy to send you a Sage script or a Python script if
it will help. Usually, about 30 bytes of output is enough to recover the
state but not if those 30 bytes are hashed first.
Here is a sketch of some simplistic game-based reasoning. This is not a
finished proof or final definition; the oracle structure and state
lineage would need more work. But it captures the engineering failure mode.
Call it ASH-KEM/HYB: Algebraic-Structure-Hiding robustness for
peer-recoverable KEM inputs, including hybrid KEX use.
Let RBG_t be an RBG family whose raw output contains trapdoor-
recoverable which is to say, you have some secret keys that allow you to
exploit the algebraic structure, with Dual_EC_DRBG as the NIST public
standardized example. Let W be either identity or a whitening function
such as H.
Stage 0: passive TLS-visible state recovery. TLS-visible randomness,
such as ClientHello.random, ServerHello.random, GREASE values, random
padding, randomized ordering, or related fields, is derived from the
same RBG lineage. The adversary observes the wire and wins if these
values let it recover or synchronize future RBG state.
Stage 1: active ML-KEM state recovery. For an adversary-chosen ML-KEM
public key, the sender draws (x, s') <- RBG_t(s), sets m = W(x), runs
Encaps_internal(ek, m), and sends the ciphertext. Because the adversary
knows the decapsulation key, it recovers m. The adversary wins if m lets
it recover or synchronize future RBG state.
Stage 2: passive ML-KEM compromise. Later, the same RBG lineage is used
for an honest ML-KEM encapsulation. The adversary only observes the
public key and ciphertext, but wins if Stage 0 or Stage 1 lets it
predict the future m or compute the ML-KEM shared secret without solving
the KEM's hardness problem.
Stage 3: passive hybrid compromise. In X25519MLKEM, if the same
compromised RBG lineage also feeds the future X25519 scalar, the
adversary can compute both the ML-KEM and X25519 inputs without solving
any of ML-KEM's lattice hardness assumptions or X25519's ECDLP hardness
assumptions. Note that this does not require a quantum computer.
For W(x) = x, Dual_EC_DRBG-shaped output can fail at all these points.
For W(x) = H(x), the Stage 1 ML-KEM m-oracle no longer gives the raw
structured object needed for Dual_EC_DRBG-style state recovery. That
does not solve every TLS covert channel, but it removes this one which
is extremely reliable and also surprising.
So hopefully this clarifies that the issue is not a tighter lattice
reduction. It is a practical bypass of the lattice assumption through
state recovery in the randomness path. NIST presented no such game when
it removed the hash, and did not require such a game to keep the hash.
But perhaps this is some new field (I might jokingly call it "post-
modern cryptography") that I do not have sufficient technical
experience with to follow.
No new field is needed. You want the proof joke? I am sure you can
handle the proof joke: Oded Goldreich already beat you to the name in
his paper "On Post-Modern Cryptography" in 2006 in an opinion paper
responding to... the Another Look series by Koblitz and Menezes, the
same Koblitz from the paper I cited.
I am sympathetic to the approach of proving things. The point lost
between us here is that the proofs are sometimes confusing or
misleading. I do not have a lot of confidence in proofs that for example
excluded `m` as being relevant. This as the toy game above demonstrates
is enough to guess future ML-KEM keypairs.
The historical context is also not speculative. NIST's own material on
Dual_EC_DRBG documents the NSA role and NIST's failure to reject or
modify the design [3]. The Don Johnson and John Kelsey email about
Dual_EC_DRBG's design shows how NSA gagged NIST [4] and NIST again is
mum when pressed on key issues. Juniper ScreenOS then showed how a
Dual_EC_DRBG-style mechanism deployed in real products can become a
NOBUS-except-when-someone-else-changes-the-parameters failure [5].
Current software context also matters. Bouncy Castle Java still
documents DualECSP800DRBG and also documents ML-KEM support [10][11]
[12]. Its deprecated list is relevant here too as neither of those are
on it [13]. That is a popular library too.
Again, I am not claiming this proves the TLS ML-KEM draft is backdoored
but the removal of the hash over `m` from NIST is beyond fishy.
Why is it fishy? The standardized backdoor history, the continued
availability of (historical, backdoored) DRBG code also mirrors hardware
backdoors in real devices, and the deployment of ML-KEM in the same
broad software ecosystem make the Security Considerations text worth
getting right. NIST does not meet their own definition for defense in
depth by making that change. In some sense, I worry that by focusing on
this change, we do not give enough scrunity to the lattice security
issues. What does the lattice security matter if one does not even need
to resolve the lattice security assumptions to break the security?
Cavium/Marvell is very stark reminder that hardware and RBG assumptions
matter, even though Marvell issued a carefully worded denial and then
refused to answer key aspects of the reporting [6]. This connects
directly to platform randomness: hardware RNG output, /dev/hwrng, kernel
RNG interfaces, getrandom(), getentropy(), /dev/random, and /dev/urandom
are not interchangeable with a validated NIST-approved RBG just because
they are available [20][21][22][23].
The attack strategy is real, the historical precedent is real, the
removed Kyber protection addressed this class of failure, and the cost
to document and mitigate it is tiny.
On 7/14/26 15:23, [email protected] wrote:
I just wanted to point out the irony of directing Eliot to view an
off-list email regarding the importance of keeping the emails on-
list. ...
Substantive technical decisions and consensus formation should remain on
the public list where the community can inspect the reasoning.
That is why I am putting these technical points on the record here.
Kind regards,
Jacob Appelbaum
[0] https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/FIPS/NIST.FIPS.203.pdf
[1] https://pq-crystals.org/kyber/data/kyber-specification-
round3-20210804.pdf
[2] https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/tls/PMjmt78qRreJh2RHD5eLH9nhmNQ/
[3] https://csrc.nist.gov/csrc/media/projects/crypto-standards-
development-process/documents/dualec_in_x982_and_sp800-90.pdf
[4] https://csrc.nist.gov/CSRC/media/Projects/Crypto-Standards-
Development-Process/documents/
Email_Oct%2027%202004%20Don%20Johnson%20to%20John%20Kelsey.pdf
[5] https://hovav.net/ucsd/dist/juniper.pdf
[6] https://www.theregister.com/security/2023/09/19/marvell-disputes-
claim-cavium-backdoored-its-chips/763270
[7] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7258
[8] https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/275.pdf
[9] https://eprint.iacr.org/2026/1364
[10] https://www.bouncycastle.org/download/bouncy-castle-java/
[11] https://downloads.bouncycastle.org/java/docs/bcprov-jdk15to18-
javadoc/org/bouncycastle/crypto/prng/drbg/DualECSP800DRBG.html
[12] https://downloads.bouncycastle.org/java/docs/bcprov-jdk15to18-
javadoc/org/bouncycastle/jcajce/provider/asymmetric/MLKEM.html
[13] https://downloads.bouncycastle.org/java/docs/bcprov-jdk15to18-
javadoc/deprecated-list.html
[14] https://groups.google.com/a/list.nist.gov/g/pqc-forum/c/
WFRDl8DqYQ4/m/MRa5O0CvAAAJ
[15] https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/SpecialPublications/
NIST.SP.800-90Ar1.pdf
[16] https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/SpecialPublications/
NIST.SP.800-90B.pdf
[17] https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/SpecialPublications/
NIST.SP.800-90C.pdf
[18] https://csrc.nist.gov/glossary/term/defense_in_depth
[19] https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~hovav/dist/hedge.pdf
[20] https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/getrandom.2.html
[21] https://man.openbsd.org/getentropy.2
[22] https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man4/random.4.html
[23] https://docs.kernel.org/admin-guide/hw_random.html
[24] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc9794
[25] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc9958
[26] https://groups.google.com/a/list.nist.gov/g/pqc-forum/c/Fm4cDfsx65s
On 7/14/26 00:15, [email protected] wrote:
I’m very confused by this whole crusade of yours. What does “defense
in depth” mean formally? I can’t help but read it as “arbitrary
extra steps of questionable value”. There are likely many such steps
that could be added to any cryptographic protocol. It’s unclear to
me the value of any of them.
Does hashing yield a tighter advantage bound anywhere? Or can we
quantify the benefit of additional computation here in any way? If
not, then why should we consider adding in arbitrary steps of
questionable value?
I’m also deeply confused by your references to the approx SIVP
reduction. Has this been used for ML-KEM? Note that by this I mean
the concrete question of whether
1. Approx SIVP has been worst-case cryptanalyzed, and then 2. The
estimates from that worst-case cryptanalysis have been shoved
through such a reduction, and then 3. The resulting parameters were
used for ML-KEM.
If this happened, and the reduction was highly non-tight, the
resulting ML-KEM instance could be easily attacked. That would be
concerning.
Fortunately, it never happened. So I do not see why we should care.
Even if we had a tight reduction, it’s not clear what the worst case
hard instances of approx SIVP look like outside of the NP hard
regime. So we probably would need to average case cryptanalyze it
anyway. And then what’s the point?
Note that if for some reason you have a personal predilection for
worst-case hardness, there are reductions of improved tightness by
Aggarwal et al.
iacrlogo.png Time vs Success Probability Tradeoff for SVP and BDD
with Implications to LWE and SIS <https://
eprint.iacr.org/2026/1364> eprint.iacr.org <https://
eprint.iacr.org/2026/1364>
<https://eprint.iacr.org/2026/1364>
Again, I do not think any of this discussion is relevant to this
mailing list. But to the extent to which it is being discussed, it
is out of date with the current literature.
Sent from my iPhone
On Jul 13, 2026, at 4:16 PM, Jacob Appelbaum <[email protected]>
wrote:
Hi Paul,
On 7/13/26 17:02, Paul Wouters wrote:
On Mon, 13 Jul 2026, Jacob Appelbaum wrote:
It is not a red herring against pure ML-KEM. ML-KEM is not
broken.
I'm glad to hear you think this,
Yes. My objection is not that ML-KEM's lattice problem is broken.
I have not claimed there is a backdoor but my statements were
twisted in any case.
I do worry about some of the provable security claims. For
example, Neal Koblitz, Subhabrata Samajder, Palash Sarkar, and
Subhadip Singha's 2022 paper [0] says in its abstract:
"We give a concrete analysis of this multi-step reduction. We
find that the tightness gap in the reduction is so great as to
vitiate any meaningful security guarantee, and we find reasons to
doubt the feasibility in the foreseeable future of the quantum
part of the reduction. In addition, when we make the reduction
concrete it appears that the approximation factor in the SIVP
problem is far larger than expected, a circumstance that causes
the corresponding approximate-SIVP problem most likely not to be
hard for proposed cryptosystem parameters. We also discuss
implications for systems such as Kyber and SABER that are based on
module-DLWE."
I would be interested to know whether the authors have changed
their minds, or whether their analysis received a published
response that addresses the core concerns of the 2022 paper.
People involved with NIST's PQC process know about this paper and
I do not believe that they have ever addressed it. Literature
about this is most welcome.
Again, I am not claiming that ML-KEM lattice security is
practically broken, and I am not making a negative lattice-
security claim here. I am saying that the proof landscape does not
make me _more_ comfortable with removing a very simple defense-
in- depth strategy that survived three NIST PQC rounds, that was
added to address this type of issue, and yet the removal was not
identified as a security problem.
My main issue remains the protocol consequence of NIST removing
Kyber's hash over `m`. The pushback against restoring that hash
does not seem proportional, especially when the TLS draft does not
itself impose the approved-RBG conditions that FIPS 203 used to
justify removing it. The absence of both the hash and the
approved- RBG requirement is unreasonable.
I agree that both ML-KEM drafts should get equal treatment.
I'm glad to hear you say this.
I realize that you may perceive me as being difficult, so I am
glad that you are glad. My goal here is straightforward and I
believe that they are compatible with our mutual cypherpunk
sensibilities as I remember them: strong cryptography, safe
defaults, and fewer avoidable footguns. The hashing change is
wire- compatible with a peer that decapsulates normally, and no
peer will know whether you are hashing it anyway unless they know
something about your random bytes that you probably do not know
yourself.
The equal treatment should be to restore the Kyber hash in
both drafts.
I don't think that is an option in MLKEM drafts. It could be an
option in a Kyber draft if you submit that.
If restoring the hash is "not an option" in an ML-KEM draft, then
that is exactly one major problem that I am raising. Who decides
the options? We don't have consensus, so why can't we change the
options on the table?
A generic warning about randomness does not restore the defense-
in- depth property that Kyber had. It leaves the NIST change
intact and leaves `m` recoverable by the decapsulating peer as raw
output from whatever RBG/DRBG construction is used.
If the WG cannot or will not restore Kyber's hash while still
calling the result ML-KEM, then the draft should say that clearly.
Or is mentioning this entire line of thinking also not an option?
Either way the draft should not pretend that generic RNG advice
addresses the same issue. This is not an entropy issue; it is a
hidden-structure issue. NIST removed a hidden-structure
mitigation. That is much harder to wave away than TLS as a
protocol not having defense-in-depth everywhere. One looks like an
oversight; the other was a deliberate change.
The sentence added would be about using good strong random, not
about adding a hash. If as part of good strong random, an
implementer feels the need to run a hash over RDRAND() or
whatever OS source you are using, implementers can decide to do
so on their own. It would be generic advise and apply to all
parts that need randomness.
That is not sufficient.
Of course implementers should use good randomness. The specific
issue is that ML-KEM `m` is recoverable by the decapsulating peer.
If `m` preserves hidden structure from the sender's random-
generator output, then the peer may get an oracle on that state.
Hashing `m` before encapsulation destroys that structure.
Leaving this to each implementer is exactly how the defense-in-
depth property gets lost and this is how users come into harm's
way. Some implementations will restore the hash, some will not,
and some will not know about the issue at all. I understand that
some implementers may believe their entire hardware and software
randomness stack is audited, correct, and safe against this threat
model. Fine. There are no protocol police. But IETF guidance is
not only for those implementers. It is also for everyone else,
right?
The lack of humility around this class of attack is not credible.
Dual_EC_DRBG is not imaginary history. Bouncy Castle's Java
provider ships and has shipped a Dual_EC_DRBG implementation with
the NIST standardized parameters in versions I have checked, and
it also ships ML-KEM. To be clear: Dual_EC_DRBG is not the default
DRBG there. But its continued presence is a reminder that "nobody
would ever do that" is not a serious security argument. It should
be removed, and downstream packages should remove it too and yet
we see this:
- https://downloads.bouncycastle.org/java/docs/bcprov-jdk15to18-
javadoc/ index.html?org/bouncycastle/jcajce/provider/asymmetric/
MLKEM.html
- https://downloads.bouncycastle.org/java/docs/bcprov-jdk15to18-
javadoc/ org/bouncycastle/crypto/prng/drbg/DualECSP800DRBG.html
- https://downloads.bouncycastle.org/java/docs/bcprov-jdk15to18-
javadoc/ org/bouncycastle/crypto/prng/drbg/DualECPoints.html
Notably DualEC is it not listed in their deprecated list: -
https://downloads.bouncycastle.org/java/docs/bcprov-jdk15to18-
javadoc/ deprecated-list.html
This discussion also reminds me of discussions before and after
MUSCULAR [1][2]. Yahoo! and Google engineers were surprised to
learn that GCHQ and NSA were tapping internal backbones after
those companies had already appeared in PRISM reporting. The
lesson was not that the public cryptography was broken. The lesson
was that large-scale adversaries exploit whatever gap remains or
as NSA phrased it: "SSL added and removed here :-)" The right
response is to close gaps when we see them especially when they're
cheap. It does not get much cheaper than restoring Kyber's hash.
The IETF's publications gives important advice to large companies
selling FIPS-certified products to the USG, also to Free Software
projects running on hardware that users cannot meaningfully
verify, and to many kinds of systems in between. Some systems have
had serious RNG, firmware, or hardware trust issues, including
examples such as Cavium [3]. We do not need to design for the
worst possible machine in every respect. But we should not reject
a cheap defense-in-depth step when the failure mode is exactly
historical cryptographic sabotage. The Cavium story is an
important one, and it is ignored almost entirely by people
pretending this isn't a real class of issues.
Should we discuss that as a case study in detail? It is pretty
much the most obvious smoking gun sitting on the table for over a
decade, still smoking, and still relevant.
So the technical question remains: what is the security reason to
reject restoring Kyber's hash over `m`?
If the answer is only "then it is no longer ML-KEM as specified
by NIST", that is a naming or conformance answer, not a security
answer. We are not discussing draft-ietf-tls-fips-certified-
mlkem-08, right?
If you read one report with leaked NSA documents beyond PROJECT
BULLRUN and the black budget reporting [7][8][9], I strongly
encourage you to read about SENTRY EAGLE [4][5][6]. This is not a
"conspiracy theory" frame than an NSA term of art. It is
documented history about corporate partnerships, access, and
cryptographic exploitation. That history is why some of us insist
on cheap, conservative defenses when the cost is a hash call. The
term of art by the way for the "conspiracy theory" notion as shown
in SENTRY EAGLE is Corporate Partnership. That is not even a joke
- that is just how the sausage is made.
We should discuss hardware concerns in detail, but restoring the
hash over `m` is the immediate issue.
Kind regards, Jacob Appelbaum
P.S.
I covered some of this topic in my PhD thesis [10], Chapter 4.
Check the footnotes carefully. Thanks again to Edward Snowden for
blowing the whistle on PROJECT BULLRUN and SENTRY EAGLE [4][5][6].
[0] https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/275.pdf
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-
infiltrates-links-to-yahoo-google-data-centers-worldwide-snowden-
documents-say/2013/10/30/e51d661e-4166-11e3-8b74-
d89d714ca4dd_story.html
[2] https://dcssproject.net/muscular/index.html
[3] https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366552520/New-
revelations- from- the-Snowden-archive-surface
[4] https://theintercept.com/2014/10/10/core-secrets/
[5] https://snowden.xsurveillance.site/items/show/992
[6] https://www.wired.com/2014/10/nsa-may-undercover-operatives-
foreign- companies-new-documents-show/
[7] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/black-
budget- leaked-by-edward-snowden-gives-details-of-agencies-
beyond- cia- nsa/2013/08/29/a7f20890-10f0-11e3-bdf6-
e4fc677d94a1_story.html
[8] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/08/29/your-
cheat- sheet-to-americas-secret-intelligence-budget/
[9] https://web.archive.org/web/20130831140612/http://
www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/black-budget-
summary- details-us-spy-networks-successes-failures-and-
objectives/2013/08/29/7e57bb78-10ab-11e3-8cdd-
bcdc09410972_story.html
[10] https://research.tue.nl/en/publications/communication-in-a-
world- of-pervasive-surveillance-sources-and-me/
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