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Real-World Post-Quantum Digital Signatures

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Cyber Security and Privacy (CSP 2015)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 530))

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Abstract

Digital signatures are ubiquitous in modern security infrastructures. Their lack of diversity in industrial settings makes most contemporary systems susceptible to quantum computer-aided attacks. Alternatives exist, among which a family of well-understood schemes with minimal security requirements: hash-based signatures. In addition to being quantum-safe, hash-based signatures are modular, providing long-term security. They are not yet being used in practice. We discuss the reasons for this gap between theory and practice and outline a strategy to bridge it. We then detail our work to realise the described plan.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    While the full descriptions of XMSS and its multi-tree variant are provably forward secure [10, 29], this property relies on constructs irrelevant to interoperability. The proposed standardisation of HBS schemes we discuss later therefore does not intrinsically yield forward security, but permits it if the right components (such as a forward secure pseudo-random number generator) are used in its implementation.

  2. 2.

    When using W-OTS+, security requirements are reduced from collision resistance to second preimage resistance.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. TU Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

    Denis Butin & Johannes Buchmann

  2. genua mbH, Kirchheim Bei München, Germany

    Stefan-Lukas Gazdag

Authors
  1. Denis Butin
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  2. Stefan-Lukas Gazdag
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  3. Johannes Buchmann
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Denis Butin .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Waterford Institute of Technology, Waterford, Ireland

    Frances Cleary

  2. Security and Cloud Lab, Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bristol, United Kingdom

    Massimo Felici

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Butin, D., Gazdag, SL., Buchmann, J. (2015). Real-World Post-Quantum Digital Signatures. In: Cleary, F., Felici, M. (eds) Cyber Security and Privacy. CSP 2015. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 530. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25360-2_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25360-2_4

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