WaC

Abstract

The current encryption infrastructure is no match for an Artificial Superintelligence (ASI), the likely result of a possible intelligence explosion by a self-improving AI. That kind of ASI would likely be able to modify any software and thereby steal encryption keys instead of doing a brute-force attack. Under such circumstances, any private, public, or session key processed within a CPU must be considered compromised. Although an ASI with that kind of skill does not exist yet, it is important to be prepared - because that level of attack by an ASI is feasible. Reliable and unbreakable encryption and communication (Trustworthy Encryption and Communication) must be the bedrock technology for any ASI Safety solution that tries to keep ASI under control. No current solution can determine if the corresponding receiver or sender has dedicated crypto hardware or possibly compromised crypto soft-ware. The proposed solution is a hardware component with Key-Safe and an associated Encryption/Decryption Unit for processing data. This component will not allow any key, in particular not the public key to be in cleartext outside the Key-Safe. Keys are referred to via their hashcodes. If ASI was able to breach the hardware protection around the keys, then the solution will create evidence when stolen keys are being used outside the hardware component. Key-Safes and Hashcodes related to public/private keys can be integrated into a minimally extended version of TLS and PKI.