LMS vs XMSS: Comparison of Stateful Hash-Based Signature Schemes on ARM Cortex-M4

Abstract

Stateful hash-based signature schemes are among the most efficient approaches for post-quantum signature schemes. Although not suitable for general use, they may be suitable for some use cases on constrained devices. LMS and XMSS are hash-based signature schemes that are conjectured to be quantum secure. In this work, we compared multiple instantiations of both schemes on an ARM Cortex-M4. More precisely, we compared performance, stack consumption, and other figures for key generation, signing and verifying. To achieve this, we evaluated LMS and XMSS using optimised implementations of SHA-256, SHAKE256, Gimli-Hash, and different variants of Keccak. Furthermore, we present slightly optimised implementations of XMSS achieving speedups of up to 3.11{times } for key generation, 3.11{times } for signing, and 4.32{times } for verifying.