First 4 algorithms chosen for NIST’s post-quantum cryptographic standard

[Freak]

Here is NIST's announcement post. They've chosen the first 4 encryption algorithms that will become part of their post-quantum cryptographic standard for encryption algorithms which are resistant to attacks by quantum computers. 

The algorithms, their functions, and the mathematics they're based on are as follows:

General Encryption:

• CRYSTALS-Kyber - Lattice-based

Digital Signatures:

• CRYSTALS-Dilithium - Lattice-based
• FALCON - Lattice-based
• SPHINCS+ - Hash functions

As you can see, 3 of the 4 chosen are Lattice-based while the final one is Hash-based. There are 4 more encryption algorithms that are still under consideration, and none of them are hash or lattice based.

[cwade12c]

Definitely going to dive into these deeper! This looks exciting, thank you for the share.

Of the 4, are there any that catch your interest more than others?

[Freak]

That's a good question! I haven't looked very closely at these yet, but I read that in the signatures category the recommended algorithm for most applications is CRYSTALS-Dilithium. So I would probably say that it's between either Dilithium or Kyber, and I will probably dive into Kyber first. It says that it's secure based on the learning-with-errors problem which I had never heard of before, but it sounds really interesting. Wikipedia says it's the problem of trying to infer a function based on some of its values, but that the values may have error. That's a really intriguing problem, and I especially wonder how future advancements in AI will affect the security of that question. I'm excited to see why they think this will be a hard problem for a future quantum AI.