This paper provides an overview of the basic principles, types, recent works, and applications of quantum digital signatures. The security of traditional digital signature schemes is compromised by the rise of quantum computing, leading to a need for post-quantum cryptography. Quantum digital signatures, which rely on the principles of quantum mechanics, offer a potential solution to this problem. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive overview of quantum digital signatures and post-quantum digital signatures. The paper introduces the basic principles of quantum mechanics, then explains key distribution in quantum digital signatures. The paper then provides a detailed description of both quantum and post-quantum digital signatures, including their differences and applications. Finally, the paper summarizes the main findings in the field, highlights potential future directions, and discusses challenges that humans must address. In addition, the paper examines the widespread applications of quantum digital signatures and post-quantum digital signatures in various fields such as Bitcoin, smart city blockchain, and finance. Finally, the paper summarizes the key findings in the field, highlighting potential future directions and discussing challenges that humans must address. Overall, this paper aims to provide readers with a comprehensive understanding of quantum digital signatures and post-quantum digital signatures and their applications in various domains.
This paper provides an overview of the basic principles, types, recent works, and applications of quantum digital signatures. The security of traditional digital signature schemes is compromised by the rise of quantum computing, leading to a need for post-quantum cryptography. Quantum digital signatures, which rely on the principles of quantum mechanics, offer a potential solution to this problem. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive overview of quantum digital signatures and post-quantum digital signatures. The paper introduces the basic principles of quantum mechanics, then explains key distribution in quantum digital signatures. The paper then provides a detailed description of both quantum and post-quantum digital signatures, including their differences and applications. Finally, the paper summarizes the main findings in the field, highlights potential future directions, and discusses challenges that humans must address. In addition, the paper examines the widespread applications of quantum digital signatures and post-quantum digital signatures in various fields such as Bitcoin, smart city blockchain, and finance. Finally, the paper summarizes the key findings in the field, highlighting potential future directions and discussing challenges that humans must address. Overall, this paper aims to provide readers with a comprehensive understanding of quantum digital signatures and post-quantum digital signatures and their applications in various domains.
With the constantly advancing capabilities of quantum computers, conventional cryptographic systems relying on complex math problems may encounter unforeseen vulnerabilities. Unlike regular computers, which are often deemed cost-ineffective in cryptographic attacks, quantum computers have a significant advantage in calculation speed. This distinction potentially makes currently used algorithms less secure or even completely vulnerable, compelling the exploration of post-quantum cryptography (PQC) as the most reasonable solution to quantum threats. This review aims to provide current information on applications, benefits, and challenges associated with the PQC. The review employs a systematic scoping review with the scope restricted to the years 2022 and 2023; only articles that were published in scientific journals were used in this paper. The review examined the articles on the applications of quantum computing in various spheres. However, the scope of this paper was restricted to the domain of the PQC because most of the analyzed articles featured this field. Subsequently, the paper is analyzing various PQC algorithms, including lattice-based, hash-based, code-based, multivariate polynomial, and isogeny-based cryptography. Each algorithm is being judged based on its potential applications, robustness, and challenges. All the analyzed algorithms are promising for the post-quantum era in such applications as digital signatures, communication channels, and IoT. Moreover, some of the algorithms are already implemented in the spheres of banking transactions, communication, and intellectual property. Meanwhile, despite their potential, these algorithms face serious challenges since they lack standardization, require vast amounts of storage and computation power, and might have unknown vulnerabilities that can be discovered only with years of cryptanalysis. This overview aims to give a basic understanding of the current state of post-quantum cryptography with its applications and challenges. As the world enters the quantum era, this review not only shows the need for strong security methods that can resist quantum attacks but also presents an optimistic outlook on the future of secure communications, guided by advancements in quantum technology. By bridging the gap between theoretical research and practical implementation, this paper aims to inspire further innovation and collaboration in the field.
This paper aimed to provide a thorough examination of recent advancements in digital signatures, emphasizing data security, authentication, and information non-repudiation in the digital age. The study is based on a review of scientific literature from the period 2020 to 2025, in which fundamental principles such as cryptography, public key infrastructure (PKI), hash functions, and RSA algorithms were analysed. It was confirmed that the practical principles of digital signatures were analysed in sensitive areas such as blockchain and healthcare, along with emerging technologies like post-quantum systems and artificial intelligence. The research findings showed that traditional algorithms like RSA are gradually being replaced by newer models such as Syrga-1 and HBSS, which provide better protection against quantum attacks. The importance of PKI in identity verification and certificate management within decentralized systems was confirmed. We consider digital signatures to be essential for ensuring integrity and non-repudiation in many applications. This study enhances academic literature by elucidating contemporary difficulties and prospects for continued progress in digital security. Nonetheless, constraints remain concerning the experimental status of post-quantum technologies and the absence of widespread standardization. Recommendations include expediting the standardization of post-quantum algorithms, incorporating them with blockchain technology, formulating lightweight schemes for the Internet of Things, and enhancing awareness about the usage of digital signatures in both public and private sectors.
Public key cryptography plays a pivotal role in maintaining digital security and privacy, with its foundations built on the hardness of certain mathematical problems. However, the emergence of quantum computing threatens the security of current cryptographic systems, making the adoption of post-quantum cryptography (PQC) an urgent necessity. Digital signature schemes are essential components in secure communications, providing authentication, non-repudiation, and data integrity. This paper examines the state of post-quantum digital signature schemes across various cryptographic approaches, including lattice-based, code-based, multivariate polynomial-based, hash-based, symmetric-key-based, and isogeny-based systems, alongside advancements in Multi-Party Computation in the Head (MPC-in-the-head) schemes. The paper then explores application-specific signatures such as blind, undeniable, threshold, chameleon, aggregate, and ring signatures, explaining their main use cases and the existing post-quantum cryptographic classifications that support these constructions individually. Software implementations of selected prominent PQC digital signature schemes were carried out, and their performance was systematically analysed using metrics such as bandwidth consumption, latency, and computational efficiency. These results provide key observations regarding the suitability of different schemes for both resource-constrained and high-performance environments. Subsequently, a detailed literature review of implementations on embedded and hardware platforms is presented, focusing on ARM-based devices and FPGA accelerators to evaluate deployment feasibility beyond general-purpose processors. Based on the software and implementation-level findings, a comparative analysis across software, embedded, and hardware platforms is conducted to highlight architectural influences on performance, scalability, and practicality. Furthermore the cryptanalytic attacks on post-quantum digital signature schemes across various PQC classifications are examined in this paper, taking into account both classical and quantum adversarial models. To evaluate realistic security constraints, implementation-oriented vulnerabilities such as side-channel and fault-based attacks are also examined. In addition, the applicability of post-quantum digital signature schemes within TLS, IoT, and related practical deployment scenarios is analysed. The study also discusses possible directions for further investigation, focusing on the requirement for effective and expandable PQC systems that can satisfy changing cybersecurity requirements. In order to protect sensitive data in the digital era, this study emphasizes the need for implementing quantum-secure systems by fusing theoretical understandings with real-world applications.
Information security is a fundamental and urgent issue in the digital transformation era. Cryptographic techniques and digital signatures have been applied to protect and authenticate relevant information. However, with the advent of quantum computers and quantum algorithms, classical cryptographic techniques have been in danger of collapsing because quantum computers can solve complex problems in polynomial time. Stemming from that risk, researchers worldwide have stepped up research on post-quantum algorithms to resist attack by quantum computers. In this review paper, we survey studies in recent years on post-quantum cryptography (PQC) and provide statistics on the number and content of publications, including a literature overview, detailed explanations of the most common methods so far, current implementation status, implementation comparisons, and discussion on future work. These studies focused on essential public cryptography techniques and digital signature schemes, and the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) launched a competition to select the best candidate for the expected standard. Recent studies have practically implemented the public key encryption/key encapsulation mechanism (PKE/KEM) and digital signature schemes on different hardware platforms and applied various optimization measures based on other criteria. Along with the increasing number of scientific publications, the recent trend of PQC research is increasingly evident and is the general trend in the cryptography industry. The movement opens up a promising avenue for researchers in public key cryptography and digital signatures, especially on algorithms selected by NIST.
The protection and security of information have always been and continue to be one of the major challenges we face today. Message encryption, digital signatures, financial and banking transactions, and the emerging cryptocurrency market are all threatened by the advancement of quantum computing and its potential ability to break the keys of current algorithms. Cryptographic environments based on public key encryption and digital signatures could be compromised by a sufficiently powerful quantum computer. Over the last decade, state organizations and companies dedicated to information technologies have made significant progress in the development of quantum and postquantum cryptography. This article aims to provide an overview of the advancements and evolution of quantum and post-quantum cryptography algorithms, highlighting their importance in creating secure encryption to mitigate the potential threats posed by quantum computing.
Quantum cryptography represents a revolutionary approach to securing communications by harnessing the principles of quantum mechanics. This paper provides an overview of the state-of-the-art techniques in quantum cryptography, focusing on key areas such as Quantum Key Distribution (QKD), quantum secure direct communication (QSDC), and quantum digital signatures. We explore the advancements in QKD protocols, including BB84, E91, and the recently proposed measurement-device-independent QKD (MDI-QKD), which aim to counteract practical threats such as detector loopholes. Additionally, we discuss the integration of quantum cryptography with classical systems, the challenges in implementing quantum-safe protocols, and the efforts towards achieving large-scale quantum networks. Finally, we examine the future directions of quantum cryptography, addressing emerging technologies such as quantum repeaters, quantum memory, and hybrid quantum-classical encryption schemes, which are expected to enhance the security and scalability of quantum communication systems. The paper concludes with insights into the practical deployment of quantum cryptography and its potential to reshape the landscape of global cybersecurity in the coming decades.