Ben had grown up in laboratories since he was a child.
His father was a physicist, his mother a biologist. Since both his parents were affiliated with the same university, laboratories were a more familiar place to Ben than home. Thanks to that, he was able to observe all sorts of researchers earlier than any child in the world.
Mathematicians, physicists, chemists, engineers.
Their work was all different, but in one respect, they were all the same. When they stood before the field that fascinated them, they became entirely different people. The taciturn mathematician who grew talkative in front of a blackboard, or the shy biologist who became frighteningly cold and sharp in front of a microscope.
Ben loved their purity.
But an ecosystem always contained many different species. The researchers Ben had liked were, so to speak, ideal specimens. People who threw everything they had purely toward knowledge.
Once he actually began working inside a laboratory, Ben realized that such purity was far rarer than he had thought.
Swoosh.
Ben subtly turned his eyes to the side.
His gaze stopped on a researcher standing in front of the whiteboard. Min Jaehyeok, dispatched from the Korean side.
He was staring intently at the operational process of the non-abelian group Seoha had written down. On the surface, he looked like a researcher burning with academic zeal, but to Ben’s eyes, his acting was plain as day.
‘People who are mad about mathematics don’t make faces like that.’
He saw them until he was sick of it every day at Apex Lab.
Those people trembled with ecstasy before formulas, suffered in agony when they hit a wall, or jumped for joy like children at an unexpected development.
But Jaehyeok’s eyes were cold. Those were not the eyes of a researcher thirsting for knowledge.
Scenes like that had been witnessed all over the institute.
The list of spies tipped off by the National Intelligence Service contained five names in total. Seoha seemed to think they could simply disclose everything without hiding anything. Because he trusted the beauty and solidity of mathematics more than anything.
But that was an excessively naïve idea. The problem was always not mathematics, but humans.
Click!
While Sri was away from his seat, Min Jaehyeok was secretly photographing the code displayed on the monitor.
Why on earth would he need that?
Code revealed more than one might expect.
Coding style, variable naming conventions, frequently used mathematical choices. A skilled analyst might be able to find the weakest crack in the castle walls from that alone.
‘Seoha, I don’t trust people.’
As of today, the Red Team’s activities had ended.
The atmosphere in the institute seemed, at a glance, as if everyone had become one. It was probably because Seoha had been the first to extend a hand to them.
“You’ve all spent the past few months attacking Utopia. It was a new experience. There were directions I hadn’t predicted, too.”
Seoha said, looking around at the researchers.
“Utopia is not yet complete. My understanding of real-world implementation environments is lacking. I hope all of you will help fill in those gaps.”
He bowed politely.
It would have been a lie to say the researchers, who had not been able to participate in the design at all aside from their work as the Red Team, had not felt alienated. The atmosphere grew solemn. When no one stepped forward, Jihye raised her hand.
“It’s a technical issue, but I think there’s a slight gap in the synchronization.”
She picked up a marker and quickly drew a graph beside the equations.
“The moment the number of nodes exceeds a certain threshold, a minute timing mismatch occurs in the curvature transition interval. When hundreds of nodes perform key verification simultaneously, the geodesic paths each node refers to can differ. It’s fine for now, but if traction were to surge on a global scale, it would definitely become a problem.”
“Wow!”
Seoha exclaimed and clapped.
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 moment. You see, right here…”
Researchers raised their hands here and there, talking about points that could be improved.
The prover of the Riemann hypothesis, the mathematician who had created in mere months the sort of system cryptographers could only dream of, had asked them for help.
They were seized by a powerful desire to contribute to Utopia. But beneath that was the wish to be acknowledged as people capable of helping that genius.
Whatever their motives, the effect was clear.
There weren’t enough boards.
English and Korean could be heard from every direction. Teams and languages mixed together as everyone charged toward a single goal. But Ben kept his excitement suppressed and watched them with cold eyes.
* * *
[A Slightly Late Regular Report]
Recipient: NSA Senior Researcher David
Spring has come to Korea. In winter it was so cold I didn’t even want to take walks, but spring here is truly bright and clear. The cafeteria often serves wild vegetable bibimbap, and thinking that I won’t be able to eat this in New York is already making me depressed.
The next-generation PQC Utopia, led by Yu Seoha, is now nearly complete.
Utopia is truly astonishing. Seoha doesn’t call it a cipher, but a new security language. I think I finally understand what he means.
David, the modern digital world is far more vulnerable to attack than you think.
CCTV, the cloud, traffic lights, factories, autonomous cars… Almost every area except government agencies and banks is full of holes. It is no coincidence that even Big Tech companies, which spend enormous amounts of money on security, suffer data breaches practically every other day.
Utopia can solve all of these problems. I expect that, in time, this language will swallow the entire global security ecosystem.
You will worry about dependence in terms of national security. But that will be needless concern. People who know Seoha even a little, myself included, don’t worry about that at all.
Are you thinking of contacting the director? Put down your phone right now.
Utopia is not a threat.
If it is completed, the world will become far safer than it was before. We won’t need to worry about our private lives being exposed through cloud hacking, and we won’t have to fret over autonomous cars being used for terrorism. Of course, under the contract, NIST will manage the cipher.
Seoha probably had this picture in mind from the very beginning. That must be why he named it Utopia. At first, I thought the name might be a bit excessive, but looking at it now, there is no name more fitting.
P.S. The suggestion I proposed was adopted. Can you believe it, David? My idea is part of this beautiful, perfect language!
Click.
[Transmission Complete]
In a corner of the lobby, Joseph sat at an angle in front of his laptop.
Spring sunlight poured in through the window. The light streaming through the glass brightly illuminated the interior. Joseph closed his laptop and stretched.
He recalled when he had first come here.
The days when he had habitually scanned his surroundings. As if he had become Agent 007, he held secret conversations with Luca, and whenever he reported to David, he used an encrypted channel in a sealed room. Since when had that started to feel like a nuisance?
One day, after discussing things with Seoha until past midnight, Joseph realized that he had forgotten his duty as a spy.
‘So what? Helping develop the cipher was one of my goals anyway.’
They were developing a cipher that would be responsible for the safety of society, so why did anything else matter so much? And so, before he knew it, his sense of security had grown lax.
Crash—
He turned his gaze at the loud noise.
“No! It wasn’t me!”
Min Jaehyeok was rolling disgracefully on the floor. Agents in black suits forced him down and restrained him.
“Mr. Min Jaehyeok. You are under arrest on suspicion of violating the Industrial Technology Protection Act.”
“Do you have evidence? What kind of law lets you arrest people this recklessly? Call Seoha!”
He shouted fiercely and struggled.
At that moment, Ben stepped forward with a cold expression.
“We have evidence.”
He took out a tablet and thrust it before Jaehyeok’s eyes.
But Jaehyeok was not flustered in the slightest. He smirked and said,
“Are you sure? I have never taken any data outside.”
Ben swiped the tablet screen.
“That was certainly true. The circumstantial evidence was solid, but there was no physical evidence, so I had quite a hard time myself. You didn’t use storage devices, and there were no suspicious emails. It was perfect, except for exactly one thing.”
He had been so thorough that even the security team had missed it.
“W-what are you talking about!”
“March 11th, 11:48 p.m., Mapo-gu, Seoul.”
His body flinched.
“That’s when the file was opened. I had to make a difficult request of Sri to plant a canary token. You went outside the institute and opened the cloud through a hotspot. Then the other party quickly received it. That’s why it wouldn’t have shown up in the records. The police are probably heading over there right now, too.
Do you understand that this could become a diplomatic issue?”
The lobby fell silent.
The black suits grabbed both his arms and dragged him away. Seoha and the team members watched the scene with their mouths hanging open. Though they had given Ben permission, their faces said they had never expected something like this to actually happen.
Ben smiled and said,
“I told you, Seoha. I don’t trust humans. People don’t change. The leaked file wasn’t anything significant. But it left a bad taste.”
‘Working in the same space as a person like that.’
He swallowed the rest.
More than anything, Ben hated the thought of this place being contaminated.
The team members gave Ben a thumbs-up. He truly was a capable supporter.
That day, two more people besides Jaehyeok were taken away as well.
Joseph was trembling, not knowing when his turn would come. But no matter how long he waited, the black suits did not come for him.
Clunk—
As he took a drink from the vending machine, it slipped from his hand.
Roll, roll.
The can came to a stop in front of someone’s foot. Ben bent down and picked it up. Then he walked in a straight line toward Joseph. Joseph squeezed his eyes shut.
“You must be tired. Why don’t you take a little rest while working?”
“Pardon?”
Joseph’s eyes went round.
“Seoha was praising your idea, saying it was truly excellent. I heard him say he was really glad you were here, Joseph.”
Ben smiled and held out the can.
“Huh?”
“I look forward to your continued good work, just as you’ve been doing.”
Ben walked away. Joseph looked down at the can Ben had left with him.
Click!
A sweet yet bitter taste. But it was an unusually delicious coffee.
* * *
How long did it take for a cipher to be applied in the field?
The answer was ten years.
Not always, but on average, that was how it went.
Theoretical design and mathematical verification, peer review, standardization competition, certification and regulatory approval.
Only after passing through this arduous path did the possibility of even a pilot program finally open up. At that stage, unexpected problems usually erupted, and then they had to start all over again from the beginning.
Knowing this well, Seoha had been taking it easy. It was research that would be applied ten years later anyway, so there was no need to hurry.
The development of Utopia had now entered its final stage. But the institute was still noisy. The researchers were so overenthusiastic, demanding that this or that feature be added, that it was enough to give him a headache.
Still, he had thought all the major work was now finished—
“Seoha!”
Sujeong hurriedly ran into the office.
“Come out for a second!”
When he came out to the lobby, everyone was gathered around watching TV.
Breaking news was on.
[American Bank Computer Network Paralyzed, Customer Account Access Completely Blocked]
The anchor stood in front of the bank with an urgent expression. The area in front of the building was full of people clamoring to be allowed to withdraw their money.
“Look at this too!”
When someone changed the channel, a domestic news channel appeared.
[Hacking of Nation’s Largest Cryptocurrency Market, Damages May Reach Up to 1 Trillion Won.]
Murmur, murmur.
The lobby began to stir.
Everyone picked up their phones and searched for related articles.
Ring, ring, ring—
Seoha’s phone rang. It was the Minister of Science and ICT.
“Seoha! You’re watching the news, right? That’s just the tip of the iceberg. They say some algorithm has been developed in Russia, and it might even be able to break the Ministry of National Defense’s encryption. It seems we’re in serious trouble.”
After listening to him for a long while, Seoha answered briefly.
“It’s possible.”
Click—
Everyone looked at him.
“They say a request came from NIST. The standardization competition has been moved up to next month. Since the situation is urgent, it seems they want to run a pilot quickly.”
The schedule they had thought would leave them plenty of time had changed.
The researchers looked at one another and began talking.
“Kyber will be the top candidate, right?”
“It’s a cipher that’s been around for more than ten years, after all. At first it was just average, but after Damian joined, it hasn’t been broken once. I heard it’s consistently ranked first in internal performance evaluations too.”
“I did think RSA might break someday, but already…”
“We’re participating too, of course, right?”
Everyone’s gaze turned to Seoha. He nodded.
“Of course Utopia will enter as well. It’s still lacking, but if we work hard, couldn’t we complete it by next month?”
In other words, they would crunch until it was done.
For the next month, they would probably have to work themselves to the bone. Seoha scratched his head with an apologetic expression.
At that moment, Hyeongju clenched both fists and shouted,
“Yes! Finally!”
Cheers erupted after him.
“Utopia is finally making its debut!”
“We’ll be chosen, right?”
“Of course! Kyber is nothing!”
“We can sleep when we’re dead!”
It was an unexpected reaction. Seoha blinked blankly as he looked at them.
“Surprised?”
Sujeong asked with a smile.
“Yes.”
“I don’t think Utopia belongs only to us anymore.”
“I guess not.”
It had already been half a year since they began working together here.
As cryptographers, they could not help but be captivated by Seoha’s mathematics. And at some point, Utopia had become everyone’s dream.
The researchers encouraged one another.
“Let’s do this!”
“We’re going to make an incredible cipher! Then my name will be left in history too, even if only in small letters!”
Seoha was surprised by the heated atmosphere filling the lobby. He found himself thinking that they seemed to yearn for Utopia’s completion even more than he did.