Biblio

Current cryptographic solutions used in information technologies today like Transport Layer Security utilize algorithms with underlying computationally difficult problems to solve. With the ongoing research and development of quantum computers, these same computationally difficult problems become solvable within reasonable (polynomial) time. The emergence of large-scale quantum computers would put the integrity and confidentiality of today’s data in jeopardy. It then becomes urgent to develop, implement, and test a new suite of cybersecurity measures against attacks from a quantum computer. This paper explores, understands, and evaluates this new category of cryptosystems as well as the many tradeoffs among them. All the algorithms submitted to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for standardization can be categorized into three major categories, each relating to the new underlying hard problem: namely error code correcting, algebraic lattices (including ring learning with errors), and supersingular isogenies. These new mathematical hard problems have shown to be resistant to the same type of quantum attack. Utilizing hardware clock cycle registers, the work sets up the benchmarks of the four Round 3 NIST algorithms in two environments: cloud computing and embedded system. As expected, there are many tradeoffs and advantages in each algorithm for applications. Saber and Kyber are exceedingly fast but have larger ciphertext size for transmission over a wire. McEliece key size and key generation are the largest drawbacks but having the smallest ciphertext size and only slightly decreased performance allow a use case where key reuse is prioritized. NTRU finds a middle ground in these tradeoffs, being better than McEliece performance wise and better than Kyber and Saber in ciphertext size allows for a use case of highly varied environments, which need to value speed and ciphertext size equally. Going forward, the benchmarking system developed could be applied to digital signature, another vital aspect to a cryptosystem.

With the emergence and development of quantum computers, the traditional public-key cryptography (PKC) is facing the risk of being cracked. In order to resist quantum attacks and ensure long-term communication security, NIST launched a global collection of Post Quantum Cryptography (PQC) standards in 2016, and it is currently in the third round of selection. There are three Lattice-based PKC algorithms that stand out, and NTRU is one of them. In this article, we proposed the first complete and compact full hardware implementation of NTRU algorithm submitted in the third round. By using one structure to complete the design of the three types of complex polynomial multiplications in the algorithm, we achieved better performance while reducing area costs.