After spending more than three years examining new approaches to encryption and data protection that could defeat an assault from a quantum computer, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has winnowed the 69 submissions it initially received down to a final group of 15.
NIST has now begun the third round of public review. This selection round will help the agency decide on the small subset of these algorithms that will form the core of the first post-quantum cryptography standard.
The new standard will specify one or more quantum-resistant algorithms each for digital signatures, public-key encryption and the generation of cryptographic keys, augmenting those in FIPS 186-4, Special Publication (SP) 800-56A Revision 3 and SP 800-56B Revision 2, respectively.
For this third round, the organizers have taken the novel step of dividing the remaining candidate algorithms into two groups they call tracks. The first track contains the seven algorithms that appear to have the most promise. The eight alternate algorithms in the second track are those that either might need more time to mature or are tailored to more specific applications. (TechExplore)
Updated: European researchers in the Crystals group are leading in the development of post-quantum encryption algorithms in both the public key and digital signature categories of the process. The Crystals team includes researchers from ARM, NXP Semiconductor, CWI Amsterdam, Ruhr University Bochum, Radboud University in the Netherlands, IBM Research in Zurich and ENS Lyon.