Series

How It Would Break

13 parts of 13

1. Part 1 The Fortress and the Afterthought: How AES Would Break at Its Key Schedule

   Jul 17, 2026 · 41 min read

   AES is not broken -- but if it ever were, the crack would start at its linear key schedule, not its celebrated round function. A structural cryptanalysis tour.

2. Part 2 How SHA-2 and SHA-3 Would Break: Merkle-Damgard Collisions, Length Extension, and the Sponge's Algebraic Frontier

   Jul 17, 2026 · 49 min read

   SHA-2 and SHA-3 have never broken, yet each construction already dictates how it would fall -- collisions, length extension, and the sponge algebraic frontier.

3. Part 3 How RSA Would Break: Why Factoring Is the Slow Path and Coppersmith Is the Fast One

   Jul 17, 2026 · 42 min read

   Everyone says you break RSA by factoring the modulus. That is the slowest path. A structural tour of the fast lane, the slow lane, and the quantum one.

4. Part 4 The Log Was Never the Weak Part: How Discrete-Log Cryptography Actually Breaks

   Jul 17, 2026 · 54 min read

   For a well-chosen group the discrete log is optimally hard. Every faster break exploits the group's structure, not the log -- only Shor survives a clean one.

5. Part 5 How Q-Day Breaks Everything: Shor's Algorithm and the Simultaneous Fall of RSA, Diffie-Hellman, and ECC

   Jul 18, 2026 · 50 min read

   RSA, Diffie-Hellman, DSA, and elliptic curves share one abelian period. A single quantum computer running Shor's algorithm reads it and breaks all four at once.

6. Part 6 Two Standards, One Lattice: How ML-KEM and ML-DSA Would Break

   Jul 18, 2026 · 43 min read

   ML-KEM and ML-DSA rest on one hard problem, Module-LWE, measured by one ruler. Here is how that ruler would slip -- and why one slip debits both standards.

7. Part 7 How Falcon Would Break: NTRU Lattices and the Structure Nobody Fully Trusts

   Jul 18, 2026 · 52 min read

   Falcon is NIST's smallest post-quantum signature and its only lattice one still in draft. A structural case for why its likeliest break is NTRU-specific.

8. Part 8 How SLH-DSA Would Break: The Signature That Can Only Fall If a Hash Falls First

   Jul 18, 2026 · 49 min read

   SLH-DSA has almost no attack surface of its own. A structural tour of FORS, WOTS+ hypertrees and tweakable hashes, and why it fails only if SHA-2 or SHAKE does.

9. Part 9 The Hedge and Its Fault Line: How Classic McEliece and HQC Would Break

   Jul 18, 2026 · 44 min read

   Classic McEliece and HQC hedge post-quantum encryption on syndrome decoding, a problem unrelated to lattices -- and here is where their own math gives way.

10. Part 10 How the Whole Stack Would Break: SIDH, Correlated Assumptions, and the Cryptography We Are Betting the Next Thirty Years On

    Jul 19, 2026 · 41 min read

    No post-quantum algorithm is proven hard. The stack's only real defense is a deliberately uncorrelated portfolio of lattice, code, and hash assumptions.

11. Part 11 How Fully Homomorphic Encryption Would Break: The Seams Above the Lattice

    Jul 20, 2026 · 41 min read

    Fully homomorphic encryption computes on data it never decrypts. Its likeliest failure is not the post-quantum lattice beneath it, but the scheme layer above.

12. Part 12 A Valid Proof of a False Thing: How Zero-Knowledge Proofs Actually Break

    Jul 20, 2026 · 43 min read

    Zero-knowledge proofs rarely break at the math. They break in the circuit, the trusted setup, and the Fiat-Shamir transcript -- here is exactly how, and why.

13. Part 13 No Cipher Fell: How Secure Multiparty Computation Would Break

    Jul 20, 2026 · 44 min read

    MPC has no security level, only security relative to an adversary model. How it breaks at the honest-majority line and the selective abort, no cipher touched.

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