Feisty Duck Gazette

Feisty Duck Gazette is our quarterly company and industry update. Read on to find out what we've been up to in the last three months.

Feisty Duck News: Cryptography and Security, Live

In August, we launched Feisty Duck News, a live version of Cryptography & Security newsletter that publishes relevant news as soon as we find them. We follow a wide range of sources, favouring the people who actually make change happen. Articles are organised into the same five categories as the newsletter, each with its own RSS feed. If you have a link to share or a source we should follow, let us know.

New Training: Post-Quantum Migration

The world is migrating to post-quantum cryptography, and we're joining to help. We're currently designing a new training course, intended for executives, managers, and technical staff who need to get a grip on the PQC problems and solutions. We're looking for early adopters who are willing to work with us on the curriculum. If that's you, please get in touch with us at hello@feistyduck.com.

Key Ecosystem Events

• Hybrid post-quantum key exchange became both a standard and a default. RFC 10024 specifies ML-KEM-768 hybrid key exchange for TLS 1.3, with support already in OpenSSL and other common stacks.
• Web PKI's post-quantum path now has a hard limit: seven days. Chrome's policy allows Merkle Tree Certificates valid for up to 47 days, but the main CA cosigner is expected to be capped at 7 days. Apple's advance warning confirms the same cap. Automation with ACME and ARI is no longer optional.
• Classic McEliece, which once was thought to be rock-solid, is now effectively dead. A wave of research papers reduced its security margins, and BSI (German's office of Information Security) is no longer recommending it for new projects.
• RSA factoring records fell. Cognition factored RSA-260 (862 bits) with a GPU-accelerated GNFS at roughly $400k, and RSA-896 followed on September 19.
• Android 17 changed two big defaults. It is rolling out ECH support by default, closing a major privacy gap for billions of users. It also enforces Certificate Transparency for system-trusted certificates, which breaks custom CAs used for TLS interception.

Cryptography & Security Newsletter

The State of Post-Quantum Cryptography (#139)

Post-quantum encryption is well underway, but post-quantum authentication has barely begun. Hybrid key exchange already protects most web traffic, while authentication is far messier: Merkle Tree Certificates need a new CA ecosystem, and PKI is splitting between MTC and X.509 with ML-DSA. The biggest unsolved problem is downgrade attacks, since quantum-capable attackers could still present forged traditional certificates unless clients disable non-PQC cryptography.

Introducing Feisty Duck News: Cryptography and Security, Live (#140)

This issue covered our Feisty Duck News service. Read for more details and lots of short news. The front page highlights only the most impactful stories, which also form the shortlist for each monthly issue. You can follow any of the five categories by RSS, submit links, and suggest sources we should be watching.

Get Ready for Seven-Day Certificates (#141)

Web PKI's move to post-quantum Merkle Tree Certificates is heading toward production by the end of 2027, with the main CA cosigner expected to be capped at seven-day certificates. Short lifetimes solve revocation well, but a certificate rotated at day 4 leaves only three days to fix problems, and often one over a weekend. Rock-solid automation and continuous monitoring will be a must.