NIST Draft on Post Quantum Cryptography

On February 4th 2016, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released a draft entitled Report on Post-Quantum Cryptography. This draft presents NIST's current understanding about the status of quantum computers and post-quantum cryptography, and its initial plan to move forward.

In particular, the NIST has decided that time has come to prepare for the transition to quantum-resistant cryptography. Some striking facts reported in the draft are:

• "researchers working on building a quantum computer have estimated that it is likely that a quantum computer capable of breaking RSA-2048 in a matter of hours could be built by 2030 for a budget of about a billion dollars" (p.6)
• "transitioning from 112 to 128 bits of security is perhaps less urgent than transitioning from existing cryptosystems to post-quantum cryptosystems." (p.6)

This engagement of the NIST to standardize post-quantum cryptography is a true opportunity for everyone to react before practical quantum computing is imminent. The NIST plan is as follows:

1. Feb. 3 2016 - Mar. 9 2016: public comment period for the draft Report on Post-Quantum Cryptography.
2. 2016: proposition of a draft on the evaluation criteria for quantum-resistant public key cryptography, and public comment period.
3. until late 2017: the NIST will accept proposals for quantum-resistant public key encryption, digital signatures, and key exchange algorithms.
4. 2018 + 3/5 years: public scrutiny of the candidates to be standardized.

The NIST emphasizes that this process should not be considered as a competition. The institute see its role as a manager of a transparent process engaging with the cryptographic community, that will eventually reach a consensus on cryptographic standards to be endorsed by industry and other standards organizations around the world.

The HEAT project focuses on bringing fully homomorphic encryption one step further, into products and standards. Obviously, this cannot be, and is not, orthogonal to the quantum-resistant cryptography process. In particular, most of the fully homomorphic encryption schemes belong to one of the main family of post-quantum cryptographic primitives: lattice-based cryptography. As a consequence, all the research that is, and will be, done on fully homomorphic encryption goes hand in hand with the process initiated by the NIST. 

In particular, the Security analysis and parameter recommendations outcome will directly feed the research on analysis of post-quantum primitives. Our open-source software and hardware libraries will include algorithms that will help better understand the performance potential of lattice-based cryptography. Also a member of the HEAT consortium is involved in the ISO standardization, and the main editor of the upcoming WG 2 standard on Homomorphic Encryption, that is, encryption that supports computing over encrypted data. A workshop on Cryptographic Standards and Evaluations  (AWACS 2016) will be organized by CryptoExperts, on behalf of the ECRYPT-CSA project, on May 8 2016, and will include talks and a panel discussion on the present and near-future trends in crypto standards (with an emphasis on the post-quantum rush). 

Last but not least, many members of the HEAT consortium are actively involved in the research on post-quantum primitives such as key-exchange or digital signatures.