Submitted Abstract
The research project LIPOC (“Lightweight Post-Quantum Cryptography for the Internet of Things”) lies thematically at the intersection of two current technological revolutions, namely the proliferation of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the advent of quantum computers. LIPOC’s mission is to secure the IoT in a quantum world by researching implementation aspects of lightweight post-quantum cryptographic primitives, in particular lattice-based schemes, to make them ready for deployment on resource-constrained devices like wireless sensor nodes. The project consists of three main Work Packages (WPs); the first WP is concerned with the development of new arithmetic algorithms and software optimization techniques for the low-level ring operations that form a performance-critical building block of lattice-based cryptosystems. The second WP aims to bring lattice-based cryptography (e.g. NTRU and variants, RLWE-based algorithms) closer to practice by studying the efficient and secure (i.e. side-channel resistant) implementation of certain auxiliary functions and operations that are necessary to turn a “raw” algorithm into a fully-specified cryptosystem (e.g. Gaussian sampling, padding, pseudo-random number generation). Finally, the third WP tackles various open questions related to the integration of lattice-based key-establishment and signature systems into security protocols like DTLS, whereby we will focus on identifying the necessary modifications of the protocol specification and on the design of “hybrid” pre/post-quantum ciphersuites. The research activities carried out in the course of the LIPOC project will be embedded into the current NIST initiative for the standardization of post-quantum cryptosystems and it is planned that project members actively participate in the evaluation of the candidates’ performance on 8, 16, and 32-bit microcontrollers. In this way, LIPOC will contribute to a better understanding of how well the lattice-based cryptosystems submitted to the NIST perform on constrained devices and how well they are suited to secure the IoT.