Public-Key Cryptography in the Post-quantum Era

Dear Colleagues,

Public-key cryptography, developed in the late 1970s, is one of the fundamental tools to achieve secure communications in the modern world. The security of traditional public-key primitives, however, is threatened by Shor’s algorithm, which will de facto make the vast majority of current standards obsolete once a large-scale Quantum computer is developed. The impressive pace of progress in quantum computing, together with the necessity of securing long-term secrets and the technical time requirements for performing a transition, means the time to act is already upon us. This has prompted institutes such as NIST to prepare the ground for post-quantum standardization. Consequently, the field has seen a surge in research activity and quickly risen to a prominent position in the current cryptographic domain.

Lattice-based cryptography is the largest and most promising research area in the context of post-quantum cryptography, achieving efficient cryptographic schemes that rely on hard lattice problems, for both encryption and digital signatures. Code-based cryptosystems are also very popular, besides being among the oldest and most consolidated solutions, stemming from the seminal work of Robert McEliece in 1978. Other important approaches rely on different mathematical problems, such as solving multivariate polynomial equations and computing isogenies on elliptic curves, and represent promising avenues for building post-quantum cryptosystems.

Research in post-quantum cryptography encompasses a variety of topics related to these areas. In this Special Issue, we aim to collect contributions which are broadly related to post-quantum cryptography, including (but not limited to):

• Design of post-quantum cryptographic primitives;
• Code-based cryptography;
• Lattice-based cryptography;
• Multivariate cryptography;
• Isogeny-based cryptography;
• Cryptanalysis of post-quantum cryptosystems;
• Provable security in the ROM and QROM;
• Software and hardware implementations;
• Performance and security analysis of NIST candidates.

Dr. Edoardo Persichetti
Dr. Paolo Santini
Dr. Marco Baldi
Dr. Qiang Wang
Guest Editors

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• post-quantum
• public-key cryptography
• cryptanalysis