Quantum-robust Public KeyIntroduction[Back] As if you didn’t know, quantum computers will put an end to our most popular public-key methods. And so NIST has been working on defining a standard for the best method to replace these, and yesterday they made their announcement on the final of the PQC (Post Quantum Cryptography) standardization process. For Public-Key Encryption and KEMs (Key Exchange) we have:
and for digital signatures:
These are defined as the finalists, and a winner will be chosen from these, but because CRYSTALS-KYBER, NTRU, and SABER are lattice methods, NIST only wants one winner from a lattice technique. So it has drawn up a list for an alternative of: BIKE; FrodoKEM; HQC; NTRU Prime; and SIKE. And CRYSTALS-DILITHIUM and FALCON are lattice methods for digital signatures, so the alterative list has: GeMSS; Picnic; and SPHINCS+. NIST thus wants to guard against lattice methods being cracked in the future, and thus would like an alternative method as a back-up.
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