Logo of the Post-Quantum Cryptography Alliance
A few days ago, the Linux Foundation, announced through a blog post formation of the Post-Quantum Cryptography Alliance (PQCA), an entity dedicated to addressing the security challenges associated with the implementation of quantum computing.
It is mentioned that the main mission of the Post-Quantum Cryptography Alliance is develop and implement post-quantum encryption algorithms to counter the threats posed by quantum computinga for information security. The Alliance is committed to creating highly reliable implementations of standardized post-quantum encryption algorithms, as well as actively participating in the standardization and prototyping of new post-quantum algorithms.
The PQCA intended to be the central foundation for open source organizations and projects seeking production-ready libraries and packages to support their alignment with the U.S. National Security Agency's Cybersecurity Advisory for Commercial National Security Algorithm Suite 2.0. The PQCA will strive to enable crypto agility across the ecosystem during the timelines outlined therein.
Among the founding members The alliance includes prominent companies and organizations such as AWS, Cisco, Google, IBM, NVIDIA, IntellectEU, Keyfactor, Kudelski IoT, QuSecure and SandboxAQ, together with the University of Waterloo. It is important to highlight that among the participants in the initiative are co-authors of algorithms such as CRYSTALS-Kyber, CRYSTALS-Dilithium, Falcon and SPHINCS+, which are resistant to quantum computing attacks and have been selected for standardization by NIST.
La Need to promote post-quantum cryptographic algorithms arises due to rapid development of quantum computers. These computers have the ability to solve significantly faster problems such as prime number factorization (RSA) and elliptic curve discrete logarithms of points (ECDSA), which are the basis of modern asymmetric public key encryption algorithms. . These problems are effectively intractable on classical processors.
The PQCA will be involved in several technical projects to support its objectives, including the development of software to evaluate, prototype and implement new post-quantum algorithms. By providing these software implementations, the foundation seeks to facilitate the practical adoption of post-quantum cryptography in different industries.
The work of the PQCA builds on the foundation laid by many of the founding members over the last decade preparing for the transition to post-quantum cryptography. Several PQCA members have played important roles in the standardization of post-quantum cryptography to date, including as co-authors of the first four algorithms selected in the NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization Project (CRYSTALS-Kyber and CRYSTALS-Dilithium, Falcon and SPHINCHS+).
Although the current capabilities of quantum computers are not sufficient to crack classical encryption algorithms and digital signatures based on public keys such as ECDSA, it is anticipated that this situation may change in the next 10 years. Therefore, it is essential to develop and adopt post-quantum cryptographic algorithms that are resistant to quantum attacks, to ensure information security in the future.
It is mentioned that currently, two projects have been transferred under the auspices of the alliance, which are:
- Open Quantum Safe (OQS): This project is dedicated to the development and prototyping of cryptographic systems that are resistant to quantum computing. OQS is working on an open C language library called liboqs, which contains implementations of post-quantum algorithms. In addition, the project is developing a series of projects to integrate these algorithms into various protocols such as SSH, TLS, S/MIME and X.509 and applications such as OpenSSL, OpenSSH, wolfSSL, among others.
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PQ Code Package: This project focuses on creating and maintaining highly reliable implementations of post-quantum algorithms that are promoted as standards. In its first stage, the project aims to provide an implementation of the ML-KEM (Module-Based Key Encapsulation Mechanism) algorithm. Subsequently, work will begin on the implementation of ML-DSA and SLH-DSA. To ensure the reliability of the implementations, an independent external audit will be carried out, in addition to formal verification. Additionally, there is interest in continuing to develop existing ML-KEM implementations in languages such as C and Rust, as well as optimized options using AVX2 instructions and Aarch64 CPU extensions.
Finally if you are interested in knowing more about it, you can check the details in the following link.