Chapter 191
Translator: Dreamscribe
Ben had grown up in a laboratory.
His father was a physicist, his mother a biologist. Since both of his parents held posts at the same university, the lab was a more familiar space to Ben than his own home. Thanks to that, he got to observe more kinds of researchers earlier than any other child in the world.
Mathematicians, physicists, chemists, engineers.
The work they did was all different, but in one respect they were all the same. Put them in front of the subject that fascinated them and they became completely different human beings. A normally taciturn mathematician turning chatty in front of a blackboard, or a bashful biologist becoming frighteningly cold and clinical at a microscope. Things like that.
Ben loved their purity.
But an ecosystem always contains a variety of species. The researchers Ben had loved were, so to speak, ideal specimens. People who threw everything they had at knowledge for its own sake.
Once he actually started working inside a lab himself, Ben came to realize that such purity was far rarer than he had thought.
Glance.
Ben slid his eyes to the side.
His gaze came to rest on a researcher standing in front of the whiteboard. Min Jae-hyuk, dispatched by the Korean side.
He was staring intently at the computation Seo-ha had written out for the Noncommutative Group. On the surface it was the picture of a researcher burning with academic zeal, but to Ben's eyes the performance was completely transparent.
'Guys who are crazy about math don't make that face.'
He saw the real thing at Apex Lab until he was sick of it.
They tremble with ecstasy in front of a formula, or agonize when they hit a wall, or leap around like children over an unexpected development.
But Jae-hyuk's eyes were cold. Those were not the eyes of a researcher hungry for knowledge.
Similar scenes had been spotted all over the facility.
The list of spies tipped off by the National Intelligence Service came to five people in total. Seo-ha seemed to think it was fine to just disclose everything and hide nothing. He trusted the beauty and the sturdiness of mathematics beyond measure.
But that was an excessively naive way of thinking. The problem was never mathematics. It was always people.
Click!
While Sri was away from his seat, Min Jae-hyuk was secretly photographing the code on the monitor.
Why on earth would he need that?
Code says more than one might expect.
Coding style, variable naming conventions, the mathematical choices someone reaches for habitually. A skilled analyst might be able to find the weakest gap in the fortress wall from that alone.
'Seo-ha, I don't trust people.'
As of today, the Red Team's activities had come to an end.
On the surface the facility's atmosphere looked unified. That was probably because Seo-ha had extended his hand to them first.
"All of you have spent the last several months attacking Utopia. It was a new experience for me. There were directions I hadn't predicted."
Seo-ha said, looking around at the researchers.
"Utopia isn't finished yet. My understanding of real-world implementation environments is lacking. I would be grateful if all of you would fill that in for me."
He bowed his head politely.
It would be a lie to say the researchers, who had been given nothing but Red Team work and no involvement in the design at all, hadn't felt shut out. The mood turned solemn. When no one else stepped forward, Ji-hye raised her hand.
"It's a technical issue, but I think there's a slight gap in synchronization."
She picked up a marker and rapidly drew a graph beside the formula.
"The moment the node count crosses a certain threshold, a fine timing mismatch occurs in the curvature transition interval. When hundreds of nodes perform key verification simultaneously, the geodesic path each node references can diverge. It's fine now, but if traction explodes on a global scale, it's definitely going to be a problem."
"Wow!"
Seo-ha clapped in admiration.
Joseph stepped up next.
"I have something to say about the key renewal cycle in large-scale environments...."
"Our team was digging into the compression parameter range. Take a look for a second. Right here, see...."
Researchers raised their hands all over the room and talked about improvements.
The man who had proved the Riemann Hypothesis, the mathematician who in a matter of months had built the system cryptographers had only ever dreamed of, was asking them for help.
They were seized by a powerful desire to contribute to Utopia. But underneath that lay another thought, the wish to have it confirmed that they were people capable of being of use to that genius.
Whatever the motive, the effect was undeniable.
There weren't enough boards.
English and Korean rang out from every direction. Teams mixed, languages mixed, and everyone charged toward a single goal. But Ben watched them with cool eyes, his own excitement tamped down.
* * *
[Slightly Late Regular Report]
To: NSA Senior Researcher David
Spring has come to Korea. In winter it was so cold I didn't even want to take a walk, but spring here is truly glorious. The cafeteria often has mountain-vegetable bibimbap on the menu, and the thought that I won't be able to eat it in New York is already depressing me.
The next-generation PQC Utopia that Yu Seo-ha is leading is now nearly at the completion stage.
Utopia is genuinely astonishing. Seo-ha doesn't call it a cipher; he calls it a new security language. I feel like I'm only now understanding what he meant.
David, the modern digital world is far more vulnerable to attack than you think.
CCTV, the cloud, traffic lights, factories, self-driving cars.... Excluding government agencies and banks, almost every domain is riddled with holes. It's surely no coincidence that even Big Tech firms, which spend enormous sums on security, suffer data breaches practically every other day.
Utopia can solve all of this. I predict that in time this language will swallow every security ecosystem in the world.
You're probably worried about security dependence. But that concern is misplaced. People who know Seo-ha even a little, myself included, don't worry about that at all.
Thinking of contacting the Director? Put your phone down right now.
Utopia is not a threat.
If it's completed, the world will be far safer than it was. No need to worry about your privacy leaking through a cloud hack, no need to fret over self-driving cars being used for terrorism. And of course, per the contract, NIST will manage the cipher.
I think Seo-ha probably had this picture in mind from the very beginning. That's why he named it Utopia. At first I thought the name was a bit much, but looking at it now, no name could suit it better.
P.S. The suggestion I made was adopted. Can you believe it, David? My idea is inside that beautiful, perfect language!
Click.
[Transmission Complete]
In a corner of the lobby, Joseph sat slouched in front of his laptop.
Spring sunlight poured in through the window. The light streaming through the glass lit the interior brightly. Joseph closed his laptop and stretched.
He thought back to when he had first arrived here.
Days spent habitually scanning his surroundings. Trading secret words with Luca as though he were a 007 agent, and using encrypted channels in sealed rooms whenever he reported to David. When had all of that started to feel like such a chore?
The day he debated with Seo-ha past midnight, Joseph realized that he had forgotten his duty as a spy.
'So what? Helping develop the cipher was one of the objectives too.'
They were building a cipher that would be responsible for the safety of society. How important could anything else be next to that? And before he knew it, his security instincts had gone slack.
Crash-
He turned toward the noise.
"It's not me! I said it's not me!"
Min Jae-hyuk was rolling across the floor in an ugly scramble. Agents in black suits pinned him down and held him there.
"Min Jae-hyuk-ssi. You're under arrest on suspicion of violating the Industrial Technology Protection Act."
"You got proof? Since when can you grab a man like this out of nowhere! Bring Seo-ha here!"
He shouted savagely and thrashed.
Then Ben stepped forward with a cold expression.
"We have proof."
He pulled out a tablet and thrust it in front of Jae-hyuk's eyes.
But Jae-hyuk wasn't rattled in the slightest. He smirked and said,
"Are you sure about that? I've never once taken any material out of here."
Ben swiped to the next screen on the tablet.
"You certainly didn't. I was convinced, but with no physical evidence I had quite a hard time of it. No storage devices, no suspicious emails. It was perfect, except for one single thing."
He had been so thorough that even the security team had missed it.
"Wha... what are you talking about!"
"March 11, 11:48 p.m., Mapo-gu, Seoul."
He flinched.
"That's when the file was opened. I had to beg Sri to plant a canary token for me. You went outside the facility and opened the cloud through a hotspot. Then your contact grabbed it right away. That's why nothing showed up in the logs. The police are on their way to that address right now.
Do you even understand that this could turn into a diplomatic incident?"
The lobby went quiet.
The black suits seized him by both arms and dragged him out. Seo-ha and the team members watched with their mouths hanging open. Their faces said that they'd given Ben permission, sure, but they'd never imagined something like this would actually happen.
Ben smiled and said,
"I told you, Seo-ha. I don't trust people. People don't change. The leaked file wasn't anything important. But it leaves a bad taste."
'Working in the same space as a man like that.'
He swallowed the rest.
More than anything, Ben hated the thought of this place being contaminated.
The team members gave him a thumbs-up. He really was a capable supporter.
That day, two more people were taken away besides Jae-hyuk.
Joseph trembled, not knowing when his turn would come. But no matter how long he waited, the black suits never came.
Clunk-
He was pulling a drink out of the vending machine when his hand slipped.
Rolllll.
The can came to a stop in front of someone's feet. Ben bent down and picked it up. Then he walked in a straight line toward Joseph. Joseph squeezed his eyes shut.
"You look tired. How about taking a little rest while you work?"
"Sorry?"
Joseph's eyes went round.
"Seo-ha was raving about how excellent your idea was. I heard him saying how glad he is to have you here."
Ben grinned and held out the can.
"Huh?"
"I'm counting on you to keep it up."
Ben walked away. Joseph looked down at the can Ben had left him.
Click!
Sweet and bitter at once. But it was an unusually good cup of coffee.
* * *
How long does it take for a cipher to be applied in the real world?
The answer is ten years.
Not always, but on average.
Theoretical design and mathematical verification, peer review, standardization competition, certification and regulatory approval.
Only after that grueling road does the path open to even attempt a pilot. At that stage, unexpected problems usually blow up, and then it's back to the beginning again.
Seo-ha, who knew this well, had been taking it easy. It was research that wouldn't be applied for another decade anyway, so there was nothing to rush about.
Utopia's development had entered its final stage. The facility, however, was still in an uproar. The researchers were showing so much enthusiasm, demanding that this feature and that feature be added, that it was giving him a headache.
Still, he'd thought all the big trouble was behind him-
"Seo-ha!"
Su-jeong came rushing into the office.
"Come out here for a second!"
Out in the lobby, everyone was gathered around the TV.
A breaking news bulletin was on.
[American Bank's Network Paralyzed, Customer Account Access Fully Blocked]
An anchor stood in front of the bank wearing a frantic expression. The area in front of the building was packed with people clamoring to be allowed to withdraw their money.
"Look at this too!"
When the channel changed, a domestic news channel came on.
[Nation's Largest Cryptocurrency Market Hacked, Damages May Reach 1 Trillion Won.]
Murmur, murmur.
The lobby began to stir.
Everyone picked up their phones and searched for related articles.
Ring-ring-ring-
Seo-ha's phone rang. It was the Minister of Science and ICT.
"Seo-ha-gun! You're watching the news, right? That's just the tip of the iceberg. Some algorithm has apparently been developed in Russia, and they say it might even be able to break Ministry of Defense encryption. It really looks like we've got a serious situation."
After listening to him for a good while, Seo-ha answered briefly.
"It's possible."
Click-
Everyone looked at him.
"A request came in from NIST. The Standardization Competition has been moved up to next month. Given how urgent things are, it seems they want to run a pilot quickly."
A schedule everyone had thought was comfortably far off had changed.
The researchers looked at one another and talked.
"Kyber's the frontrunner, right?"
"It's a cipher that's been around for over ten years. It was ordinary at first, but since Damian joined it hasn't been broken a single time. I heard it's been number one in internal performance evaluations the whole way through."
"I did think RSA would break eventually, but already...."
"Obviously we're entering too, right?"
Everyone's eyes turned to Seo-ha. He nodded.
"Utopia is going in, of course. It's still not there yet, but if we put in the work, don't you think we can finish it by next month?"
In other words, crunch until it's done.
They would probably have to work themselves to the bone for a month. Seo-ha scratched his head with an apologetic look.
Then Hyung-joo clenched both fists and shouted.
"Yes! Finally!"
A roar of cheering followed.
"Utopia's making its debut already!"
"We'll be the ones picked, right?"
"Of course! Kyber's got nothing on us!"
"We can sleep when we're dead!"
It was not the reaction he'd expected. Seo-ha blinked blankly at them.
"Surprised?"
Su-jeong asked with a smile.
"Yes."
"I don't think Utopia is just ours anymore."
"It does seem that way."
It had been half a year now since they'd all been here together.
As cryptographers, there was no way these people could keep from being captivated by Seo-ha's mathematics. And somewhere along the way Utopia had become everyone's dream.
The researchers encouraged one another.
"Let's do this!"
"We're going to build one hell of a cipher! Then my name will be left in history too, even if it's only in small print."
Seo-ha was startled by the heat filling the lobby. He found himself thinking that these people wanted Utopia finished even more than he did.
*****
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