Post #1387739
2026-04-12 16:09 UTC
@argv_minus_one
"Do you have another explanation for the inexplicable push for the IETF to specify non-hybrid ML-KEM?" I don't know why you see it as inexplicable. Some people want it for various reasons, and not because they are NSA fronts.
I can see various places where the size differential (time, bits on the wire, CPU cost) are not negligible to the environment, or where the cost of eventually transitioning off hybrid are not practical (subs, satellites, zillions of telephone poles, etc).
Replies (1)
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@argv_minus_one@mastodon.sdf.org 2026-04-12 17:56
@rsalz The cost argument sounds like splitting hairs, to be honest. RSA is far more costly than X25519—that's why we're using X25519 in the first place—and people were routinely running RSA on basic home PCs in the 1990s. The phone in my pocket is a world-class supercomputer by 1990s standards. It can *easily* run ML-KEM+X25519. Let alone what a big beefy server can do.