Secure Communication Model For Quantum Federated Learning: A Post Quantum Cryptography (PQC) Framework

We design a model of Post Quantum Cryptography (PQC) Quantum Federated Learning (QFL). We develop a framework with a dynamic server selection and study convergence and security conditions. The implementation and results are publicly available1

First end-to-end PQC protected DPU-to-DPU communications

The appearance of quantum computing in the short foreseeable future and its capability to break conventional cryptographic algorithms forces to change the paradigm of secure real-time communications. Thus, government organizations, data centers, and enterprises among others are migrating their public key infrastructure towards using post-quantum cryptography (PQC) algorithms in order to mitigate the security threats posed by quantum computers. This letter presents the first quantum resilient secure end-to-end communication link based on PQC algorithms operating between two data-processing units DPU. Both data-processing units employ on-board ARM processors to perform the computationally expensive cryptographic building blocks—in that case CRYSTALS-Kyber as a key encapsulation mechanism and CRYSTALS-Dilithium for digital signature scheme in combination with advanced encryption standard with 256-bit key

First end-to-end PQC protected DPU-to-DPU communications

The appearance of quantum computing in the short foreseeable future and its capability to break conventional cryptographic algorithms forces to change the paradigm of secure real-time communications. Thus, government organizations, data centers, and enterprises among others are migrating their public key infrastructure towards using post-quantum cryptography (PQC) algorithms in order to mitigate the security threats posed by quantum computers. This letter presents the first quantum resilient secure end-to-end communication link based on PQC algorithms operating between two data-processing units DPU. Both data-processing units employ on-board ARM processors to perform the computationally expensive cryptographic building blocks—in that case CRYSTALS-Kyber as a key encapsulation mechanism and CRYSTALS-Dilithium for digital signature scheme in combination with advanced encryption standard with 256-bit key

Cryptanalysis of LWE and SIS-based cryptosystems by using quantum annealing

In the paper, we study lattice-based cryptographic problems, in particular Learning With Errors (LWE) and Short Integer Solution (SIS) lattice problems, which are considered to be known cryptographic primitives that are supposed to be secure against both classical and quantum attacks. We formulated the LWE and SIS problems as Mixed-Integer Programming (MIP) model and then converted them to Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization (QUBO) problem, which can be solved by using a quantum annealer. Quantum annealing searches for the global minimum of an input objective function subjected to the given constraints to optimize the given model. We have estimated the q-bits required for the Quantum Processing Unit (QPU). Our results show that this approach can solve certain instances of the LWE and SIS problems efficiently

Optimization for SPHINCS+ using Intel Secure Hash Algorithm Extensions

SPHINCS+ was selected as a candidate digital signature scheme for standardization by the NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization Process. It offers security capabilities relying only on the security of cryptographic hash functions. However, it is less efficient than the lattice-based schemes. In this paper, we present an optimized software library for the SPHINCS+ signature scheme, which combines the Intel® Secure Hash Algorithm Extensions (SHA-NI) and AVX2 vector instructions. We obtain significant speed-up of SPHINCS+-128f-simple on both non-optimized (70%) and AVX2 reference implementations (8% -23%) offering 128-bit security

Exploring Parallelism to Improve the Performance of FrodoKEM in Hardware

FrodoKEM is a lattice-based key encapsulation mechanism, currently a semi-finalist in NIST’s post-quantum standardisation effort. A condition for these candidates is to use NIST standards for sources of randomness (i.e. seed-expanding), and as such most candidates utilise SHAKE, an XOF defined in the SHA-3 standard. However, for many of the candidates, this module is a significant implementation bottleneck. Trivium is a lightweight, ISO standard stream cipher which performs well in hardware and has been used in previous hardware designs for lattice-based cryptography. This research proposes optimised designs for FrodoKEM, concentrating on high throughput by parallelising the matrix multiplication operations within the cryptographic scheme. This process is eased by the use of Trivium due to its higher throughput and lower area consumption. The parallelisations proposed also complement the addition of first-order masking to the decapsulation module. Overall, we significantly increase the throughput of FrodoKEM; for encapsulation we see a 16 × speed-up, achieving 825 operations per second, and for decapsulation we see a 14 × speed-up, achieving 763 operations per second, compared to the previous state of the art, whilst also maintaining a similar FPGA area footprint of less than 2000 slices.</p

Side-Channel Analysis on Post-Quantum Cryptography Algorithms

The advancements of quantum computers brings us closer to the threat of our current asymmetric cryptography algorithms being broken by Shor\u27s Algorithm. NIST proposed a standardization effort in creating a new class of asymmetric cryptography named Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC). These new algorithms will be resistant against both classical computers and sufficiently powerful quantum computers. Although the new algorithms seem mathematically secure, they can possibly be broken by a class of attacks known as side-channels attacks (SCA). Side-channel attacks involve exploiting the hardware that the algorithm runs on to figure out secret values that could break the security of the system. The third round of the PQC standardization put some emphasis on the algorithm\u27s ability to mitigate side-channel attacks. In this work, two candidate KEM algorithms Kyber and Saber are analyzed through a multi-platform setup. Both unprotected and protected implementations on Cortex-M4 microcontrollers through masking are analyzed using the test vector leakage assessment with an oscilloscope and a ChipWhisperer too

Optimized Implementation of Encapsulation and Decapsulation of Classic McEliece on ARMv8

Recently, the results of the NIST PQC contest were announced. Classic McEliece, one of the 3rd round candidates, was selected as the fourth round candidate. Classic McEliece is the only code-based cipher in the NIST PQC finalists in third round and the algorithm is regarded as secure. However, it has low efficiency. In this paper, we propose an efficient software implementation of Classic McEliece, a code-based cipher, on 64-bit ARMv8 processors. Classic McEliece can be divided into Key Generation, Encapsulation, and Decapsulation. Among them, we propose an optimal implementation for Encapsulation and Decapsulation. Optimized Encapsulation implementation utilizes vector registers to perform 16-byte parallel operations, and optimize using the specificity of the identity matrix. Decapsulation implemented efficient Multiplication and Inversion on $F_2^m$ field. Compared with the previous results, Encapsulation showed the performance improvement of up-to 1.99× than the-state-of-art works