First Final PQC Stan­dards published

In addi­ti­on to Quan­tum Key Dis­tri­bu­ti­on (QKD), ano­ther stra­tegy is being pur­sued on the way to quan­tum-secu­re encryp­ti­on: Post-Quan­tum Cryp­to­gra­phy (PQC). PQC is a deve­lo­p­ment of clas­sic public key cryp­to­gra­phy and is based on the expec­ted com­ple­xi­ty of mathe­ma­ti­cal algo­rith­ms. The aim of PQC is to deve­lop encryp­ti­on methods based on infor­ma­ti­on theo­ry that can­not be cra­cked even by powerful Quan­tum Com­pu­ters.
In view of the gro­wing thre­at posed by Quan­tum Com­pu­ters to the con­fi­den­tia­li­ty and inte­gri­ty of digi­tal com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on, the US Natio­nal Insti­tu­te of Stan­dards and Tech­no­lo­gy (NIST) has been inves­ti­ga­ting the secu­ri­ty of num­e­rous quan­tum-resistant PQC algo­rith­ms in a mul­ti-stage pro­cess sin­ce 2017. After inten­si­ve test­ing, the first final PQC stan­dards, FIPS 203, FIPS 204 and FIPS 205, which descri­be algo­rith­ms deri­ved from CRYS­TALS-Dili­thi­um, CRYSTALS-KYBER and SPHINCS+, were published in mid-August 2024. Click here for more infor­ma­ti­on.