Performance Evaluation of Round 2 Submission for the NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography Project

This paper looks at the submissions for round 2 of a competition held by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to find an encryption standard resistant to attacks by post-quantum computers. NIST announced its call for submissions in February 2016 with a deadline of November 2017 and announced the 69 algorithms that made the cut for round 1. In January 2019 the candidates for round 2 were announced with round 3 projected for 2020/2021

Introduction to Post-Quantum Cryptography in Scope of NIST's Post-Quantum Competition

Tänapäeval on andmeturve paljudes valdkondades määrava tähtsusega, kuid hiljutised edusammud kvantmehhaanika valdkonnas võivad tänased interneti turvaprotokollid ohtu seada. Kuna kvantvutid on tõenäoliselt võimelised murdma meie praeguseid krüptostandardeid, tekib vajadus tugevamate krüpteerimisalgoritmide järele. Viimaste kümnendite jooksul on postkvantkrüptograafia saanud palju tähelepanu, kuid siiani pole ükski postkvantkrüptograafiline algoritm standardiseeritud ulatuslikuks kasutamiseks. Seetõttu algatati NIST programm, mille eesmärk on valida uued krüptostandardid, mis säilitaks oma turvalisuse ka kvantarvutite vastu. Käesolev lõputöö annab ülevaate postkvantkrüptograafia erinevatest valdkondadest - võrepõhine, koodipõhine, räsipõhine ja mitmemuutujaline krüptograafia - kasutades näiteid NIST standardiseerimisprogrammist. Lõputöö eesmärk on koostada ülevaatlik materjal, mis annaks informaatika või matemaatika taustaga tudengile laiahaardelised algteadmised postkvantkrüptograafia valdkonnast.Nowadays, information security is essential in many fields, ranging from medicine and science to law enforcement and business, but the developments in the area of quantum computing have put the security of current internet protocols at risk. Since quantum computers will likely be able to break most of our current cryptostandards in trivial time, a need for stronger and quantum-resistant encryption algorithms has arisen. During the last decades, a lot of research has been conducted on the topic of quantum-resistant cryptography, yet none of the post-quantum algorithms have yet been standardized. This has encouraged NIST to start a program to select the future post-quantum cryptography standards. This thesis gives an overview of different types of quantum-resistant algorithms, such as lattice-, code-, hash- and multivariate polynomial based algorithms, for public key encryption and signature schemes, using the examples from NIST’s postquantum cryptography standardization program. The aim of this paper is to compose a compact material, which gives a person with computer science background a basic understanding of the main aspects of post-quantum cryptography

Developments in multivariate post quantum cryptography.

Ever since Shor\u27s algorithm was introduced in 1994, cryptographers have been working to develop cryptosystems that can resist known quantum computer attacks. This push for quantum attack resistant schemes is known as post quantum cryptography. Specifically, my contributions to post quantum cryptography has been to the family of schemes known as Multivariate Public Key Cryptography (MPKC), which is a very attractive candidate for digital signature standardization in the post quantum collective for a wide variety of applications. In this document I will be providing all necessary background to fully understand MPKC and post quantum cryptography as a whole. Then, I will walk through the contributions I provided in my publications relating to differential security proofs for HFEv and HFEv−, key recovery attack for all parameters of HFEm, and my newly proposed multivariate encryption scheme, HFERP

Under Quantum Computer Attack: Is Rainbow a Replacement of RSA and Elliptic Curves on Hardware?

Among cryptographic systems, multivariate signature is one of the most popular candidates since it has the potential to resist quantum computer attacks. Rainbow belongs to the multivariate signature, which can be viewed as a multilayer unbalanced Oil-Vinegar system. In this paper, we present techniques to exploit Rainbow signature on hardware meeting the requirements of efficient high-performance applications. We propose a general architecture for efficient hardware implementations of Rainbow and enhance our design in three directions. First, we present a fast inversion based on binary trees. Second, we present an efficient multiplication based on compact construction in composite fields. Third, we present a parallel solving system of linear equations based on Gauss-Jordan elimination. Via further other minor optimizations and by integrating the major improvement above, we implement our design in composite fields on standard cell CMOS Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs). The experimental results show that our implementation takes 4.9 us and 242 clock cycles to generate a Rainbow signature with the frequency of 50 MHz. Comparison results show that our design is more efficient than the RSA and ECC implementations

Towards Post-Quantum Blockchain: A Review on Blockchain Cryptography Resistant to Quantum Computing Attacks

[Abstract] Blockchain and other Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) have evolved significantly in the last years and their use has been suggested for numerous applications due to their ability to provide transparency, redundancy and accountability. In the case of blockchain, such characteristics are provided through public-key cryptography and hash functions. However, the fast progress of quantum computing has opened the possibility of performing attacks based on Grover's and Shor's algorithms in the near future. Such algorithms threaten both public-key cryptography and hash functions, forcing to redesign blockchains to make use of cryptosystems that withstand quantum attacks, thus creating which are known as post-quantum, quantum-proof, quantum-safe or quantum-resistant cryptosystems. For such a purpose, this article first studies current state of the art on post-quantum cryptosystems and how they can be applied to blockchains and DLTs. Moreover, the most relevant post-quantum blockchain systems are studied, as well as their main challenges. Furthermore, extensive comparisons are provided on the characteristics and performance of the most promising post-quantum public-key encryption and digital signature schemes for blockchains. Thus, this article seeks to provide a broad view and useful guidelines on post-quantum blockchain security to future blockchain researchers and developers.10.13039/501100010801-Xunta de Galicia (Grant Number: ED431G2019/01) 10.13039/501100011033-Agencia Estatal de Investigación (Grant Number: TEC2016-75067-C4-1-R and RED2018-102668-T) 10.13039/501100008530-European Regional Development FundXunta de Galicia; ED431G2019/0

Fuzzy matching template attacks on multivariate cryptography : a case study

Multivariate cryptography is one of the most promising candidates for post-quantum cryptography. Applying machine learning techniques in this paper, we experimentally investigate the side-channel security of the multivariate cryptosystems, which seriously threatens the hardware implementations of cryptographic systems. Generally, registers are required to store values of monomials and polynomials during the encryption of multivariate cryptosystems. Based on maximum-likelihood and fuzzy matching techniques, we propose a template-based least-square technique to efficiently exploit the side-channel leakage of registers. Using QUAD for a case study, which is a typical multivariate cryptosystem with provable security, we perform our attack against both serial and parallel QUAD implementations on field programmable gate array (FPGA). Experimental results show that our attacks on both serial and parallel implementations require only about 30 and 150 power traces, respectively, to successfully reveal the secret key with a success rate close to 100%. Finally, efficient and low-cost strategies are proposed to resist side-channel attacks

Towards Green Computing Oriented Security: A Lightweight Postquantum Signature for IoE

[EN] Postquantum cryptography for elevating security against attacks by quantum computers in the Internet of Everything (IoE) is still in its infancy. Most postquantum based cryptosystems have longer keys and signature sizes and require more computations that span several orders of magnitude in energy consumption and computation time, hence the sizes of the keys and signature are considered as another aspect of security by green design. To address these issues, the security solutions should migrate to the advanced and potent methods for protection against quantum attacks and offer energy efficient and faster cryptocomputations. In this context, a novel security framework Lightweight Postquantum ID-based Signature (LPQS) for secure communication in the IoE environment is presented. The proposed LPQS framework incorporates a supersingular isogeny curve to present a digital signature with small key sizes which is quantum-resistant. To reduce the size of the keys, compressed curves are used and the validation of the signature depends on the commutative property of the curves. The unforgeability of LPQS under an adaptively chosen message attack is proved. Security analysis and the experimental validation of LPQS are performed under a realistic software simulation environment to assess its lightweight performance considering embedded nodes. It is evident that the size of keys and the signature of LPQS is smaller than that of existing signature-based postquantum security techniques for IoE. It is robust in the postquantum environment and efficient in terms of energy and computations.This project was funded by the Deanship of Scientific Research (DSR), King Abdulaziz University. Jeddah. under grant No. (DF-457-156-1441).Rani, R.; Kumar, S.; Kaiwartya, O.; Khasawneh, AM.; Lloret, J.; Al-Khasawneh, MA.; Mahmoud, M.... (2021). Towards Green Computing Oriented Security: A Lightweight Postquantum Signature for IoE. Sensors. 21(5):1-20. https://doi.org/10.3390/s2105188312021

The Impact of Quantum Computing on Present Cryptography

The aim of this paper is to elucidate the implications of quantum computing in present cryptography and to introduce the reader to basic post-quantum algorithms. In particular the reader can delve into the following subjects: present cryptographic schemes (symmetric and asymmetric), differences between quantum and classical computing, challenges in quantum computing, quantum algorithms (Shor's and Grover's), public key encryption schemes affected, symmetric schemes affected, the impact on hash functions, and post quantum cryptography. Specifically, the section of Post-Quantum Cryptography deals with different quantum key distribution methods and mathematicalbased solutions, such as the BB84 protocol, lattice-based cryptography, multivariate-based cryptography, hash-based signatures and code-based cryptography.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figure, 3 tables, journal article - IJACS