[CFRG] Re: Silithium - A Compact, Efficient and Non-separable Hybrid Signature

["D. J. Bernstein" <[e-mail]>]

John Mattsson writes:
> I am happy that you are so interested in what I have to say, but this
> is quite clearly a misquotation. The full sentence I wrote was:
> "That actually seems compatible with the view that securing the
> randomness should be done by the application and not the algorithm.”

You stated this general view as justification for a position that you
were taking regarding a specific system (namely: "the correct fix for
either case is to improve RNG outside of ML-KEM rather than papering
over a bad RNG inside ML-KEM itself").

I correctly quoted "securing the randomness should be done by the
application and not the algorithm". As I said, I don't see how to
reconcile this with "I strongly prefer hedged constructions. Purely
random nonce generation has led to major vulnerabilities in the past,
whether due to implementation errors or weak RNGs".

If the answer is that "securing the randomness should be done by the
application and not the algorithm" was an overstatement, then can you
please retract that statement, whether or not you're making other
statements on the topic? Thanks in advance.

---D. J. Bernstein


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