UK's NCSC Publishes White Paper on Advanced Cryptography

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) of the United Kingdom has published a white paper on "Advanced Cryptography," defined as cryptographic techniques for handling encrypted data, offering enhanced functionalities compared to traditional cryptography. This includes homomorphic encryption, attribute-based encryption, zero-knowledge proofs, and secure multiparty computation. The NCSC warns against using these techniques without a clear understanding of the problem to be solved and strongly advises users against designing or implementing their own cryptography due to the complexity of the algorithms. Although these techniques enable new applications with different trust relationships, they present challenges such as the immaturity of the techniques, significant computational loads, slow response times, and risks of new attack vectors. Initiatives are underway to standardize certain forms of advanced cryptography, and the efficiency of implementations is continually improving.