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Improved algorithms of post-quantum cryptographic group actions

Gilchrist, Valerie

Published Nov 25, 2025• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Our modern world is dependent on online communications and transactions. To ensure privacy in these digital actions, it is extremely common to use protocols such as the Diffie-Hellman key exchange scheme. Unfortunately, these systems have been shown to be vulnerable to attacks from a quantum adversary. This means that an overhaul of the field of cryptography is needed in order to anticipate and mitigate this threat.Over the past years, the community has begun to answer this call by proposing and analyzing new techniques that are conjectured to be quantum safe. One such example is the study of cryptographic group actions. These mappings mimic some of the structure from the Diffie-Hellman protocol,but abstract it enough so that new mathematical operations can be employed that avoid quantum attacks. Currently, the main examples of group actions come from isogenies, codes, and lattices.In order for a protocol to be used in the real-world we would hope for it to be secure, fast, and requiring little storage. This means that in these early stages of research and development of cryptographic group actions, it is essential to begin to answer some of the questions surrounding security and efficiency. This thesis contributes to this effort by focusing on these aspects across different group actions that have been proposed for use in the literature.It is certainly true that each individual group action needs its own study of security. When designers are trying to achieve some advanced functionalities in a protocol, they may sometimes alter the underlying security assumptions.Each time this is done, the new assumptions need their own careful study as well. In this thesis we consider four different variants of group action security assumptions spanning the isogeny, tensor, linear code, and matrix code group actions. We analyze their security by either offering concrete attacks or giving a polynomial time reduction to a more well-studied assumption. This helps to indicate whether a problem is appropriate for use in cryptography, and what parameters to use if so.In addition to security, this thesis is also inscribed in the effort to study the efficiency of group actions by including three works studying the isogeny group action and related subroutines. They span the core isogeny problem for oriented elliptic curves, evaluating isogenies from a kernel generator, and supersingularity testing. With an effort from the community to improve overall runtimes, we can hope to get closer to reasonable speeds for real-life use.By studying the security and efficiency of cryptographic group actions, this thesis shines light on group actions as a promising framework for post-quantum cryptographic solutions.

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Our modern world is dependent on online communications and transactions. To ensure privacy in these digital actions, it is extremely common to use protocols such as the Diffie-Hellman key exchange scheme. Unfortunately, these systems have been shown to be vulnerable to attacks from a quantum adversary. This means that an overhaul of the field of cryptography is needed in order to anticipate and mitigate this threat.Over the past years, the community has begun to answer this call by proposing and analyzing new techniques that are conjectured to be quantum safe. One such example is the study of cryptographic group actions. These mappings mimic some of the structure from the Diffie-Hellman protocol,but abstract it enough so that new mathematical operations can be employed that avoid quantum attacks. Currently, the main examples of group actions come from isogenies, codes, and lattices.In order for a protocol to be used in the real-world we would hope for it to be secure, fast, and requiring little storage. This means that in these early stages of research and development of cryptographic group actions, it is essential to begin to answer some of the questions surrounding security and efficiency. This thesis contributes to this effort by focusing on these aspects across different group actions that have been proposed for use in the literature.It is certainly true that each individual group action needs its own study of security. When designers are trying to achieve some advanced functionalities in a protocol, they may sometimes alter the underlying security assumptions.Each time this is done, the new assumptions need their own careful study as well. In this thesis we consider four different variants of group action security assumptions spanning the isogeny, tensor, linear code, and matrix code group actions. We analyze their security by either offering concrete attacks or giving a polynomial time reduction to a more well-studied assumption. This helps to indicate whether a problem is appropriate for use in cryptography, and what parameters to use if so.In addition to security, this thesis is also inscribed in the effort to study the efficiency of group actions by including three works studying the isogeny group action and related subroutines. They span the core isogeny problem for oriented elliptic curves, evaluating isogenies from a kernel generator, and supersingularity testing. With an effort from the community to improve overall runtimes, we can hope to get closer to reasonable speeds for real-life use.By studying the security and efficiency of cryptographic group actions, this thesis shines light on group actions as a promising framework for post-quantum cryptographic solutions.
The goal of this project is to understand and analyze the supersingular isogeny Diffie Hellman (SIDH), a post-quantum key exchange protocol which security lies on the isogeny-finding problem between supersingular elliptic curves. In order to do so, we first introduce the reader to cryptography focusing on key agreement protocols and motivate the rise of post-quantum cryptography as a necessity with the existence of the model of quantum computation. We review some of the known attacks on the SIDH and finally study some algorithmic aspects to understand how the protocol can be implemented.
The impending arrival of large-scale quantum computers poses a significant threat to modern public-key cryptography, which is largely based on the hardness of integer factorization and the discrete logarithm problem. Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), a cornerstone of current digital security, is particularly vulnerable to attacks by quantum algorithms, notably Shor's algorithm. This has catalyzed the development of Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC), a new generation of cryptographic systems designed to be secure against both classical and quantum adversaries. Among the various PQC families, isogeny-based cryptography has emerged as a compelling, albeit complex, candidate. This paper explores the reimagination of elliptic curve principles for a post-quantum world through the lens of isogeny graphs. We provide a comprehensive overview of the transition from classical ECC to isogeny-based schemes, detailing the mathematical foundations of elliptic curve isogenies and the construction of supersingular isogeny graphs. The core of our analysis focuses on how the problem of finding a secret isogeny path between two curves in this graph forms the basis for quantum-resistant cryptographic protocols. We review the evolution of seminal protocols such as Supersingular Isogeny Diffie-Hellman (SIDH) and its variants, discussing their initial promise. Crucially, the paper also addresses the recent groundbreaking cryptanalytic attacks on SIDH, which have reshaped the landscape of isogeny-based cryptography. We analyze the implications of these attacks and the ongoing research to develop new, more secure isogeny-based schemes like SQISign. By comparing the performance metrics (key size, performance, security) of isogeny-based systems with other leading PQC candidates, such as those based on lattices and codes, this paper offers a balanced perspective on their potential role in future cryptographic standards.
The rise of quantum computing poses a significant threat to contemporary public-key cryptography, which relies on problems like integer factorization and the discrete logarithm, both of which are solvable in polynomial time by Shor's algorithm. This has prompted a global effort to develop and standardize post-quantum cryptographic primitives that are resistant to attacks by both classical and quantum computers. Among the various families of post-quantum candidates, isogeny-based cryptography has emerged as a particularly compelling, albeit challenging, alternative. This paper explores the mathematical foundations of elliptic curve isogenies and their application as a basis for quantum-resistant cryptographic protocols. We delve into the structure of supersingular elliptic curves and the associated isogeny graphs, which form the basis for the conjectured hardness of the underlying computational problems. The Supersingular Isogeny Diffie-Hellman (SIDH) protocol and its derivative, Supersingular Isogeny Key Encapsulation (SIKE), are examined in detail as principal examples of this cryptographic paradigm. We analyze their key advantages, most notably their exceptionally small key sizes, which offer significant benefits for constrained environments. However, the security landscape of isogeny-based cryptography has been dramatically reshaped by recent cryptanalytic breakthroughs that completely broke the SIKE protocol. This paper analyzes the nature of these attacks, discussing the vulnerabilities they exploited and the profound implications for the field. We conclude by surveying the current state of isogeny-based cryptography in the aftermath of these developments, outlining the proposed countermeasures, alternative designs, and the open research questions that define the new frontier for this promising area of post-quantum cryptography.
Alice and Bob want to exchange information and make sure that an eavesdropper will not be able to listen to them, even with a quantum computer.To that aim they use cryptography and in particular a key-exchange protocol. These type of protocols rely on number theory and algebraic geometry. However current protocols are not quantum resistant, which is the reason why new cryptographic tools must be developed. One of these tools rely on isogenies, i.e. homomorphisms between elliptic curves. In this thesis the first contribution is an implementation of an isogeny-based key-exchange protocol resistant against side-channel attacks (timing and power consumption analysis, fault injection). We also generalize this protocol to a larger set of elliptic curves.
Widely used communication and messaging protocols, e.g., TLS 1.3 and Signal, are insecure against an adversary with a quantum computer. We expect that post-quantum security will become mandatory for a new generation of cryptographic protocols in the nearest 10-15 years. The analysis of existing post-quantum secure cryptographic tools for key exchange, encryption and message authentication based on hard problems in codes, lattices, ring learning with errors and elliptic curve isogenies revealed their advantages and drawbacks. In particular, we conclude, that the main threat to communication and messaging protocols is only pre-quantum security of currently used Diffie-Hellman key exchange protocols. We summarize efficiency and safety results for each class of post-quantum cryptographic schemes and present an experimental implementation of isogeny-based Diffie-Hellman-like key exchange protocol as an illustration of their applicability.
Recent advances in quantum computing have made existing public key cryptosystems vulnerable to enormous security threats. Therefore, numerous efforts have been exploring post-quantum cryptographic techniques to address the emergence of quantum computing. We focus on one promising post-quantum cryptography known as “isogeny-based cryptography,” first by reviewing some concepts of the elliptic curve isogeny, and then, we present three major methods for constructing isogeny-based difficult problems. Then, we present some existing isogeny-based cryptographic primitives, such as signature and key exchange, and analyze their advantages and disadvantages. Finally, we discuss a few major challenges of isogeny research that, we hope, will attract more attention to isogeny-based cryptography.