From 08a4a043d4e2df0f7a947d16986a059e6dd90a3c Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Frank Denis Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 06:23:47 -0800 Subject: [PATCH] Remove anti-NIST statement --- README.markdown | 26 -------------------------- 1 file changed, 26 deletions(-) diff --git a/README.markdown b/README.markdown index 31d88379..72b52f96 100644 --- a/README.markdown +++ b/README.markdown @@ -13,32 +13,6 @@ higher-level cryptographic tools. Sodium is a portable, cross-compilable, installable, packageable fork of NaCl (based on the latest released upstream version [nacl-20110221](http://hyperelliptic.org/nacl/nacl-20110221.tar.bz2)), with a compatible API. -## Is it full of NSA backdoors? - -![No NIST](http://i.imgur.com/HSxeAmp.png) - -The design of Sodium's primitives is completely free from NIST (and by -association, NSA) influence, with the following minor exceptions: -- The Poly1305 MAC, used for authenticating integrity of ciphertexts, -uses AES as a replaceable component, -- The Ed25519 digital signature algorithm uses SHA-512 for both key -derivation and computing message digests, -- APIs are provided to SHA-512 and SHA-512/256, but are replaceable by -the Blake2 hash function, which the Sodium library also provides. - -The design choices, particularly in regard to the Curve25519 -Diffie-Hellman function, emphasize security (whereas NIST curves -emphasize "performance" at the cost of security), and "magic -constants" in NaCl/Sodium are picked by theorems designed to maximize -security. - -The same cannot be said of NIST curves, where the specific origins of -certain constants are not described by the standards and may be -subject to malicious influence by the NSA. - -And despite the emphasis on higher security, primitives are faster -across-the-board than most implementations of the NIST standards. - ## Portability In order to pick the fastest working implementation of each primitive,