The National Institute of Standards and Technology (or NIST) is the government body who are said to 'standardize' weights and measures, physical coin standards, voting machines and cybersecurity.

Seeing that just one centralized body is pushing to standardize just four quantum resistant algorithms. Why only four I thought - why 'standardizing' them - this didn't make sense from a security angle.

Then I thought, as many of you have already thought - maybe they'll want introduce a backdoor.

Sure enough, they've already got a history in this - see the section 'Controversy regarding NIST standard SP 800-90' in this Wikipedia article https://wikiless.org/wiki/National_Institute_of_Standards_and_Technology?lang=en

The NIST regularly consult with the NSA. The NSA pushed to add a secret backdoor - in the end, becoming the sole editor of the code. Reports of this, from Wired, is archived here Thankfully this secret backdoor was uncovered and thanks to a public outcry, and press coverage, the backdoor appears to have been removed.

It's obvious they'll want to govern Quantum-proof cryptographic algorithms and introduce backdoors.

Can history repeat itself? It looks like it might.

It seems that both the NIST, the NSA and the CISA are all jointly publishing a new resource for, 'Migrating to Post-Quantum Cryptography'. Here's their archived press releases here - archived for your viewing and security pleasure.

From CISA:

From NIST:

They're after feedback from the worldwide cryptographic community by November 22 - you might not wish to give it directly - in fact, you might not even wish to visit their websites.

However, you can share your cogitations about the implications of this with our community here.