Post-Quantum Lattice-Based Cryptography Implementations

Abstract

The advent of quantum computing threatens to break many classical cryptographic schemes, leading to innovations in public key cryptography that focus on post-quantum cryptography primitives and protocols resistant to quantum computing threats. Lattice-based cryptography is a promising post-quantum cryptography family, both in terms of foundational properties as well as in its application to both traditional and emerging security problems such as encryption, digital signature, key exchange, and homomorphic encryption. While such techniques provide guarantees, in theory, their realization on contemporary computing platforms requires careful design choices and tradeoffs to manage both the diversity of computing platforms (e.g., high-performance to resource constrained), as well as the agility for deployment in the face of emerging and changing standards. In this work, we survey trends in lattice-based cryptographic schemes, some recent fundamental proposals for the use of lattices in computer security, challenges for their implementation in software and hardware, and emerging needs for their adoption. The survey means to be informative about the math to allow the reader to focus on the mechanics of the computation ultimately needed for mapping schemes on existing hardware or synthesizing part or all of a scheme on special-purpose har dware.