Information classified by the United States Government as SECRET and TOP SECRET that is exchanged between the US, UK, Canada and certain NATO countries is protected using at-risk post quantum secure cryptographic primitives. The story is as follows.

The Cryptographic Modernization Program (started in 1999) is a United States Department of Defense directed, NSA Information Assurance Directorate led effort to transform and modernize Information Assurance capabilities for the 21st century. It has three phases:

• Replacement - All at risk devices to be replaced.
• Modernization - Integrate modular (programmable / embedded) crypto solutions.
• Transformation - Be compliant to GIG / NetCentric requirements.

All command and control, communications, computer, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, information technology and weapons systems that rely upon cryptography for the provision of assured confidentiality, integrity, and authentication services will become a part of this long-term undertaking.

The Cryptographic Modernization program is a tightly integrated partnership between the NSA, the military departments, operational commands, defense agencies, the Joint Staff, federal government entities and industry.

As part of the Cryptographic Modernization Program the NSA has specified two suites of cryptographic algorithms, Suite A and Suite B. Suite A contains classified algorithms that will not be released. Suite B is a set of openly published cryptographic algorithms. The choice of two suites of algorithm allows for protection of sensitive government data (using Suite A) as well as interoperability with coalition partners (using Suite B), such as NATO. (sourced from webpages displayed at "Military Information Technology" which are no longer online).

Most modernized devices will include both Suite A (US only) and Suite B support.

The capabilities of Suite A are not openly published and so it is not possible to determine if this suite has been explicitly designed to protect against code-breaking quantum computers.

Suite B recommends the use of AES-128 and AES-256, ECC for key exchanges, ECC for digital signatures and SHA-256 and SHA-384 for hash functions. AES-128 and ECC are known to be vulnerable to quantum computing attacks. We quote the following announcement by NSA on the use of ECC:

The United States, the UK, Canada and certain other NATO nations have all adopted some form of elliptic curve cryptography for future systems to protect classified information throughout and between their governments. The Cryptographic Modernization Initiative in the US Department of Defense aims at replacing almost 1.3 million existing equipments over the next 10 years. In addition, the Department's Global Information Grid will require a vast expansion of the number of security devices in use throughout the US Military. This will necessitate change and rollover of equipment with all major US allies. Most of these needs will be satisfied with a new generation of cryptographic equipment that uses elliptic curve cryptography for key management and digital signatures. [...]

Elliptic Curve Cryptography provides greater security and more efficient performance than the first generation public key techniques (RSA and Diffie-Hellman) now in use. As vendors look to upgrade their systems they should seriously consider the elliptic curve alternative for the computational and bandwidth advantages they offer at comparable security.

The open community may never become aware of the level of threat posed by code-breaking quantum computers against Suite A. However, what is clear from this announcement is that sensitive INTERNATIONAL communications traffic, with a SECRET or TOP SECRET classification between UK, Canada and certain other NATO nations will be / are communicating using technologies that are widely accepted to be insecure against code-breaking quantum computers.

Today the international community has the potential to protect the at risk ECC key exchange operations with Synaptic Labs' range of key exchange technologies and protect ECC for digital signatures using modern schemes based on the pioneering work of Lamport-Diffie-Merkle using the AES-256 and SHA-384 post quantum secure operations present in the NSA suite B.

Synaptic technologies can rapidly upgrade systems that use ECC as a first step while the global comunity considers what solution to standardise on for the replacement of ECC / RSA.