Post-quantum Lightweight Cryptography

Dear Colleagues,

There is a strong need for reliable post-quantum lightweight cryptography.

We are on the brink of the next major shift in the ICT revolution, with the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) and fifth generation (5G) mobile communications. Currently, there are around 21 billion connected IoT devices, and it is projected that there will be more than 75 billion IoT devices worldwide by 2025. One indisputable fact is that most of these newly networked devices have limited resources. The current standards for symmetric cryptography have been optimized for desktop and server environments. When it comes to resource-constrained devices, these primitive standards are very difficult or impossible to implement. These issues are the subject of the current NIST Lightweight Cryptography Standardization project, which is seeking lightweight authenticated encryption and lightweight hash functions [1].

The situation for post-quantum public-key schemes that can be implemented and used in resource-constrained devices is even more dramatic. The reasons for this are that post-quantum designs have significantly larger public keys, larger signatures, or larger ciphertexts. Thus, it seems that the natural constraints present in lightweight cryptography are a significant restrictive factor for post-quantum public-key design.

The ongoing NIST standardization process for post-quantum public-key schemes is in phase 3 with four proposed finalists for Public-Key Encryption and Key-Establishment Algorithms and three proposed finalists for Digital Signature Algorithms [2]. None of these candidates are designed as lightweight and for resource-constrained environments.

[1] NIST, “Lightweight Cryptography”, https://csrc.nist.gov/Projects/Lightweight-Cryptography

[2] NIST, “Post-Quantum Cryptography”, https://csrc.nist.gov/projects/post-quantum-cryptography

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• lightweight cryptography
• post-quantum cryptography
• IoT
• 5G
• resource-constrained devices