Although the fast development of quantum computers poses no immediate threat to currently deployed cryptography, NIST has started the post-quantum cryptography (PQC) standardization project in December 2016. NIST has already published the requested comments on the initial public drafts of three Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) for their three Round 3 post-quantum cryptography candidates (i.e., Kyber, Dilithium, and SPHINCS+) on August 24, 2023, and the draft of the FIPS on Falcon is still in processing. In addition, NIST recently issued a new call for additional signatures recently, namely NIST Standardization of Additional Digital Signature Schemes, which aims preferably for signatures based on non-lattice problems. NIST has published 40 Round 1 candidates on 17 July 2023.
The
research
activities
of
this
direction
is
to
investigate
new
algorithms
for
efficient
implementations
of
quantum
resistant
cryptographic
algorithms
including
key
encapsulation
algorithms
(KEM)
and
digital
signature
schemes
(DSS).
It
includes
two
sub-research
areas:
1.
Post-quantum
secure
mechanisms
for
video
conferencing
systems:
The
research
activities,
under
partnership
with
TAURIA,
are
to
investigate
how
to
build
efficient
and
optimized
crypto
engines
for
NIST
PQC
Round
3
candidates
and
to
explore
their
applications
in
end-to-end
encryption
and
multi-cast
encryption
for
quantum
secure
video
conferencing
systems.
2.
Design
and
implementation
of
zero-knowledge
proof
enabled
digital
signature
schemes:
The
research
is
to
explore
symmetric-key
based
zero-knowledge
succinct
non-interactive
argument
of
knowledge
(zkSNARK)
proofs.
These
schemes
naturally
yield
quantum
resistant
DSS,
along
the
line
of
Stark,
Ligero,
Aurora,
and
Polaris.
The
requirementsto
conduct
this
research
include
a
good
understanding
of
computer
algebra,
cryptography,
and
software
engineering.