Hardware assisted post-quantum cryptography for embedded system devices

公钥加密（PKC）是数字通信安全的基础。现有的PKC标准依赖于分解整数（RSA）或计算离散对数（Diffie-Hellman/椭圆曲线）的难度。然而，这些“难题”很容易被新兴的量子计算机打破，从而造成迫在眉睫的安全威胁。随着量子计算机有望在未来10年内成为商业现实，迫切需要新的抗量子PKC标准。为了减少计算需求并提高功率效率和对侧信道攻击的弹性，加密系统经常在硬件辅助下实现。这种硬件辅助加密对于（资源受限的）嵌入式系统设备至关重要，应用领域包括智能/身份证、移动通信、运输、银行、付费电视、物联网设备、可穿戴设备、工业4.0等。虽然已经提出了新的“后量子加密”方案，但量子计算机很难解决；这些使用的数学/算法操作与现有的RSA/EC标准有很大的不同，这些标准几乎没有工程传统。PQC的主要类别是格型、码型、多元多项式型、等基因型和哈希型算法。PQShield正在动员一支世界级的团队来应对这一挑战，并已经在许多PQC算法类型上取得了重要突破，其中包括NIST PQC标准化过程的两个半决赛候选人。

Public key cryptography (PKC) is fundamental to the security of digital communications. Existing PKC standards rely on the difficulty of factoring integers (RSA) or calculating discrete logarithms (Diffie-Hellman/Elliptic-Curves). However, these 'hard problems' are easily broken by emerging quantum computers, creating an imminent security threat. With quantum computers expected to become a commercial reality within the next 10-years, there is an urgent need for new quantum-resistant PKC standards.To reduce computational demand and to improve power efficiency and resilience to side-channel attacks, cryptography systems are frequently implemented with hardware assistance. Such hardware assisted cryptography is essential for (resource constrained) embedded system devices, in application areas such as smart/ID cards, mobile communications, transport, banking, Pay-Tv, IoT devices, wearables, Industry 4.0\.Whilst new 'post-quantum cryptography' schemes have been proposed that are difficult for quantum computers to solve; these utilise mathematical/algorithmic operations vastly different from existing RSA/EC standards for which little engineering tradition exists. Major classes of PQC are lattice-, code-, multivariate polynomial-, isogeny-, and hash-based algorithms.PQShield are mobilising a world-class team to address this challenge and have already achieved important breakthroughs for many PQC algorithm types, including two semi-finalist candidates at the NIST standardisation process of PQC.