Abstract
Security of currently deployed public-key cryptography algorithms is foreseen to be vulnerable against quantum computer attacks. Hence, a community effort exists to develop post-quantum cryptography (PQC) algorithms, most notably the NIST PQC standardization competition. In this work, we have investigated how lattice-based candidate algorithms fare when implemented in hardware. To achieve this, we have assessed 12 lattice-based algorithms in order to identify their basic building blocks. We assume the algorithms will be implemented in an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) platform and the targeted technology is 65 nm. To estimate the characteristics of each algorithm, we have assessed the following characteristics: memory requirements, use of multipliers, and use of hashing functions. Furthermore, for these building blocks, we have collected area and power figures for all studied algorithms by making use of commercial memory compilers and standard cells. Our results reveal interesting insights about the relative importance of each building block for the overall cryptosystem, which can be used for guiding ASIC designers when selecting an algorithm or when deciding where to focus optimization efforts such that the final design respects requirements and design constraints.
Highlights
Electronic devices are vulnerable to an array of security threats, a problem that is more widespread than ever in the internet-of-things era
We emphasize that complete implementations of NIST lattice-based post-quantum cryptography (PQC) algorithms are not described in this work for the reason that we have not accounted for the “glue logic” that gives meaning to each algorithm—instead, we focus on the individual building blocks
Area and power figures for each accelerator are calculated by using Equations (1) and (2), respectively, in which we sum the contributions of each building block
Summary
Electronic devices are vulnerable to an array of security threats, a problem that is more widespread than ever in the internet-of-things era. The backbone technology ensuring that sensitive data can be transmitted over an unsecured public channel is cryptography. It has two distinct flavors, i.e., private-key and public-key cryptography. Over the last few decades, public-key cryptography (PKC) has become a fundamental security protocol for all forms of digital communication, both wired and wireless. Cryptography) is based on the difficulty of solving integer factorization and discrete logarithm problems. It has been shown that quantum computers can factorize integers in a polynomial-time—the consequence being that traditional PKC algorithms may become vulnerable [1]
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