With the possibility of quantum computers making an appearance, possibly capable of breaking several well established and widespread crytposystems (especially those that implement public key cryptography), necessity has arisen to create new cryptographic algorithms which remain safe even against adversaries using quantum computers. Several algorithms based on different mathematical problems have been proposed which are considered to be hard to solve with quantum computers. In recent years, a new lattice-based mathematical problem called Learning With Errors (and its variant Ring - Learning With Errors) was introduced, and several cryptosystems based on this problem were introduced, some of which are becoming practical enough to compete with traditional schemes that have been used for decades. The primary focus in this work is the implementation of two Ring - Learning With Errors based schemes (one key exchange mechanism and one digital signature scheme) on the TLS protocol via the OpenSSL library as a way of checking their overall viability in real-world scenarios, by comparing them to classical schemes implementing the same functionalities.
With the possibility of quantum computers making an appearance, possibly capable of breaking several well established and widespread crytposystems (especially those that implement public key cryptography), necessity has arisen to create new cryptographic algorithms which remain safe even against adversaries using quantum computers. Several algorithms based on different mathematical problems have been proposed which are considered to be hard to solve with quantum computers. In recent years, a new lattice-based mathematical problem called Learning With Errors (and its variant Ring - Learning With Errors) was introduced, and several cryptosystems based on this problem were introduced, some of which are becoming practical enough to compete with traditional schemes that have been used for decades. The primary focus in this work is the implementation of two Ring - Learning With Errors based schemes (one key exchange mechanism and one digital signature scheme) on the TLS protocol via the OpenSSL library as a way of checking their overall viability in real-world scenarios, by comparing them to classical schemes implementing the same functionalities.
Lattice-based cryptographic primitives are believed to offer resilience against attacks by quantum computers. We demonstrate the practicality of post-quantum key exchange by constructing cipher suites for the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol that provide key exchange based on the ring learning with errors (R-LWE) problem, we accompany these cipher suites with a rigorous proof of security. Our approach ties lattice-based key exchange together with traditional authentication using RSA or elliptic curve digital signatures: the post-quantum key exchange provides forward secrecy against future quantum attackers, while authentication can be provided using RSA keys that are issued by today's commercial certificate authorities, smoothing the path to adoption. Our cryptographically secure implementation, aimed at the 128-bit security level, reveals that the performance price when switching from non-quantum-safe key exchange is not too high. With our R-LWE cipher suites integrated into the Open SSL library and using the Apache web server on a 2-core desktop computer, we could serve 506 RLWE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 HTTPS connections per second for a 10 KiB payload. Compared to elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman, this means an 8 KiB increased handshake size and a reduction in throughput of only 21%. This demonstrates that provably secure post-quantum key-exchange can already be considered practical.
Lattice-based cryptographic primitives are believed to offer resilience against attacks by quantum computers. We demonstrate the practicality of post-quantum key exchange by constructing cipher suites for the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol that provide key exchange based on the ring learning with errors (R-LWE) problem, we accompany these cipher suites with a rigorous proof of security. Our approach ties lattice-based key exchange together with traditional authentication using RSA or elliptic curve digital signatures: the post-quantum key exchange provides forward secrecy against future quantum attackers, while authentication can be provided using RSA keys that are issued by today's commercial certificate authorities, smoothing the path to adoption. Our cryptographically secure implementation, aimed at the 128-bit security level, reveals that the performance price when switching from non-quantum-safe key exchange is not too high. With our R-LWE cipher suites integrated into the Open SSL library and using the Apache web server on a 2-core desktop computer, we could serve 506 RLWE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 HTTPS connections per second for a 10 KiB payload. Compared to elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman, this means an 8 KiB increased handshake size and a reduction in throughput of only 21%. This demonstrates that provably secure post-quantum key-exchange can already be considered practical.
The only known threat to some symmetric cryptographic schemes like DES is Grover’s algorithm that proposes a square root speed-up over classical brute force algorithms. NIST [14] points out that if the key sizes are sufficient, symmetric cryptographic schemes (specifically the Advanced Encryption Standard-AES) are resistant to quantum computers. The development of quantum computer is on full pace, hopefully it might be available in a decade. Thus, it is necessary to develop efficient quantum secure public key cryptosystems to provide safe key exchange in quantum era. In this paper we presented an efficient implementation of a Ring-Learning with errors public key cryptosystem whose security is based on intractability of hard problem on lattices. And comparative analysis of proposed cryptosystem with RSA, ECDH and LWE based key exchange protocols is presented.
Among the different cryptosystems, the Public Key Cryptosystems (PKCS) are of great usage and are used in many applications. Most of the current PKCS are based on a hard problem making the cryptanalysis of such cipher infeasible given the current computing and memory availability. However, Quantum Computing threatens all the current PKCS as they offer a new model that can solve those hard problems, e.g. the factorization problem of RSA or the discrete logarithm problem of ELGAMAL algorithm. Lattice Based PKCS are a promising filed to introduce an immune cipher system against quantum cryptanalysis. This paper presents a summary of recent progress in the field of lattice-based cryptography, by focusing on the recent advancement in lattice-based public key cryptosystems and key exchange mechanisms based on the learning with errors (LWE) problem and its ring variant Ring-LWE.
Lattice-based cryptography offers some of the most attractive primitives believed to be resistant to quantum computers. Following increasing interest from both companies and government agencies in building quantum computers, a number of works have proposed instantiations of practical post-quantum key exchange protocols based on hard problems in ideal lattices, mainly based on the Ring Learning With Errors (R-LWE) problem. While ideal lattices facilitate major efficiency and storage benefits over their non-ideal counterparts, the additional ring structure that enables these advantages also raises concerns about the assumed difficulty of the underlying problems. Thus, a question of significant interest to cryptographers, and especially to those currently placing bets on primitives that will withstand quantum adversaries, is how much of an advantage the additional ring structure actually gives in practice. Despite conventional wisdom that generic lattices might be too slow and unwieldy, we demonstrate that LWE-based key exchange is quite practical: our constant time implementation requires around 1.3ms computation time for each party; compared to the recent NewHope R-LWE scheme, communication sizes increase by a factor of 4.7x, but remain under 12 KiB in each direction. Our protocol is competitive when used for serving web pages over TLS; when partnered with ECDSA signatures, latencies increase by less than a factor of 1.6x, and (even under heavy load) server throughput only decreases by factors of 1.5x and 1.2x when serving typical 1 KiB and 100 KiB pages, respectively. To achieve these practical results, our protocol takes advantage of several innovations. These include techniques to optimize communication bandwidth, dynamic generation of public parameters (which also offers additional security against backdoors), carefully chosen error distributions, and tight security parameters.
The imminent threat posed by cryptographically relevant quantum computers necessitates a paradigm shift in public-key cryptography. Traditional schemes like RSA and Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), the bedrock of modern secure communication, are vulnerable to quantum algorithms such as Shor's. This paper explores Module-LWE (Learning With Errors) cryptosystems as a compelling post-quantum replacement for RSA. We delve into the foundational mathematical properties of Module-LWE, highlighting its security rooted in the presumed intractability of hard lattice problems. A key focus is the concept of "tightly reduced hardness," which signifies that the security of a cryptographic scheme based on Module-LWE can be directly and efficiently linked to the worst-case hardness of an underlying lattice problem. This tight reduction allows for more aggressive parameter choices, leading to improved efficiency, smaller key and ciphertext sizes, and enhanced performance compared to generic LWE or other post-quantum candidates, without compromising security. We analyze the advantages of Module-LWE in terms of provable security, performance characteristics, and its suitability for key encapsulation mechanisms and digital signatures. The discussion encompasses its practical implications, implementation considerations, and its strong position within the NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography standardization effort, ultimately presenting Module-LWE as a robust, efficient, and future-proof alternative to RSA in a post-quantum world.