EPOQUE · Engineering post-quantum cryptography

Our digital society critically relies on protection of data and communication against espionage and cyber crime. Underlying all protection mechanisms is cryptography, which we are usingdaily to protect, for example, internet communication or e-banking. This protection is threatened by the dawn of universal quantum computers, which will break large parts of thecryptography in use today. Transitioning current cryptographic algorithms to crypto that resist attacks by large quantum computers, so called ""post-quantum cryptography"", is possibly thelargest challenge applied cryptography is facing since becoming a domain of public research in the second half of the last century. Large standardization bodies, most prominently ETSI andNIST, have started efforts to evaluate concrete proposals of post-quantum crypto for standardization and deployment. NIST's effort follows in the tradition of successful public ""cryptocompetitions"" with strong involvement by the academic cryptographic community. It is expected to run through the next 5 years.This project will tackle the engineering challenges of post-quantum cryptography following two main research directions. The first direction investigates implementation characteristics ofsubmissions to NIST for standardization. These include speed on various platforms, code size, and RAM usage. Furthermore we will study so-called side-channel attacks and propose suitablecountermeasures. Side-channel attacks use information such as timing or power consumption of cryptographic devices to obtain secret information. The second direction is about protocolintegration. We will examine how different real-world cryptographic protocols can accommodate the drastically different performance characteristics of post-quantum cryptography, explorewhat algorithms suit best the requirements of common usage scenarios of these protocols, and investigate if changes to the high-level protocol layer are advisable to improve overall systemperformance.""