June 2025: Post Quantum Cryptography

When
Wednesday, June 4, 2025 11:00 AM EST

Who
Mike Koets, Staff Engineer, & Seth Smith, Engineer, Southwest Research Institute (SWRI)

What
“Post Quantum Cryptography”

Description
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has begun the process of selecting cryptographic algorithms that are resistant to attacks from quantum computers. Notable entities, e.g., the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Defense (DoD), have begun to advocate for the use of quantum-resistant algorithms. Relevant cybersecurity assets include connected vehicles, smart grids, and space applications. NIST has selected some algorithms for standardization, but these have been criticized as having burdensome communication overhead. Secure alternatives with lower bandwidth requirements exist; these sacrifice performance for reduced message sizes. This concession is nonetheless beneficial in communication-bottlenecked applications.

This research is investigating algorithms based on quantum secure mathematics for their performance tradeoffs. While any of the NIST-selected algorithms would serve well as the backbone of a PKI implementation, other schemes may prove advantageous. Many schemes in the front of the race employ lattice-based cryptography, hash-based cryptography, and isogeny-based cryptography. Methods based on these three difficult mathematical challenges have differing performance tradeoffs. This research seeks a comparison between these methods, especially concerning their pragmatism in constrained environments. Measurements will include memory usage, power consumption, overall speed, and the number of additional messages required for CAN and LoRaWAN protocols.