Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

Lecture notes in computer science

Post-quantum Internet Key Exchange via Authenticated Forward-Secure KEM

Yunlei Zhao, Biming Zhou, Zhixiang Zhao, Yifan Dong, Cheng Huang, Haodong Jiang

Published Jan 1, 2026• 0 citations
Publisher
DOI
10.1007/978-3-032-35428-0_9

Related papers

HPQ-AKE: A Provably Secure Sign-Less Hybrid Authenticated Key Exchange Protocol for Bandwidth-Constrained IoT and Edge Networks

Khiem Pham Tuan, Minh Le, Khuong Nguyen-An

Securing bandwidth-constrained Internet of Things (IoT) and edge networks during post-quantum migration creates an authentication trade-off: ML-KEM provides post-quantum key establishment, whereas post-quantum signatures increase certificate-chain size, verification cost, and handshake latency. We present HPQ-AKE, a sign-less hybrid authenticated key exchange for RSA-enabled IoT gateways and edge/cloud services that replaces transcript signatures with dual KEMs. HPQ-AKE combines ML-KEM-768 for post-quantum session secrecy and forward secrecy with RSA-OAEP for implicit mutual authentication, preserving existing RSA-enabled infrastructure during migration. We analyze HPQ-AKE in an extended Bellare-Rogaway model, separating classical authentication in the Random Oracle Model from session-key secrecy in the Quantum Random Oracle Model. Under the Module-LWE and RSA assumptions, it establishes AKE security, forward secrecy, and conditional KCI resistance under the long-term-key-only exposure assumptions. Evaluation combines x86 micro-benchmarking, analytical latency modeling, and 10,000-iteration Monte Carlo simulation. HPQ-AKE reduces modeled handshake transmission from 13,009 to 5,668 Bytes, a 56.4% reduction relative to a Hybrid TLS 1.3 Full handshake, while requiring 7.11 ms of total local computation on the measured x86 testbed. Under a simulated 50 kbps satellite-like link with 600 ms RTT and stochastic jitter, median latency is 1,914 ms, 31.4% below the 2,791 ms baseline. At 20 ms RTT, modeled break-even thresholds are 0.31 Mbps against the pre-cached baseline and 4.08 Mbps against the full baseline; both decrease as RTT increases. These x86-based results motivate evaluation on gateway-class IoT and edge platforms; performance on ARM gateways and unaccelerated microcontrollers remains unvalidated.

arXiv:2610.12024•Oct 8, 2026•0 citations

Post-quantum security of encrypted key exchange protocol

Yang Li, Rui-Rui Zhou

•May 24, 2013•0 citations

KEMEDHOC*: A formally verified quantum-safe key exchange protocol

Cuong Nguyen

The advent of quantum computing poses significant threats to classical public-key cryptographic systems such as RSA and Elliptic Curve Cryptography, necessitating quantum-safe migration paths for Internet of Things (IoT) communication. The Ephemeral Diffie-Hellman Over COSE (EDHOC) protocol provides lightweight authenticated key exchange for resource-constrained IoT devices but lacks quantum-safe security and formally verified implementations. This thesis introduces KEMEDHOC, a KEM-based, signature-free, post-quantum variant of EDHOC that achieves mutual authentication through optimized integration of Key Encapsulation Mechanisms (KEMs). Compared to the direct adaptation, KEMEDHOC reduces noticeably message size (by over \textbf{33\%}) and handshake time (by \textbf{15\%}), while maintaining comparable security levels. Formal verification, at design-level, using ProVerif confirms that KEMEDHOC preserve all core EDHOC security properties, including mutual authentication, confidentiality, and forward secrecy. Verified implementations (EDHOC* and KEMEDHOC*) developed in F* and Low* ensure functional correctness, memory safety, and timing constant-time behavior, down to verified C code through KaRaMel compiler. Overall, this thesis delivers the first end-to-end formally verified post-quantum variant of EDHOC, demonstrating that formal assurance and post-quantum security can be obtained efficiently in lightweight key exchange protocols.

•Oct 30, 2025•0 citations

Post-quantum Key Exchange for the Internet and the Open Quantum Safe Project

Douglas Stebila, Michele Mosca

Lecture notes in computer science•Jan 1, 2017•230 citations

Multi-party post-quantum key exchange schemes

Xuejun Fan, Fei Zhao, Xiu Ping Xu

Journal of Information Security and Applications•Oct 28, 2025•0 citations

NTN-PQ-AKE: A Lightweight Transcript-Bound and Explicitly Authenticated Post-Quantum Key Exchange for IoT

Khiem Pham Tuan

Post-quantum authenticated key exchange is needed for Internet of Things (IoT) systems facing quantum-enabled adversaries, but signature-heavy post-quantum handshakes remain costly for constrained devices and long-delay non-terrestrial network (NTN) links. This paper proposes NTN-PQ-AKE, a lightweight, transcript-bound authenticated key exchange for managed IoT/NTN deployments. The protocol avoids online post-quantum signatures by combining the Module-Lattice-Based Key-Encapsulation Mechanism (ML-KEM) with provisioned symmetric token material, replay-window checking, transcript-bound derivation using the HMAC-based Key Derivation Function (HKDF), and two-way confirmation tags. Its principal novelty relative to the KEM-based baselines considered here is the joint provision of pair-scoped pre-authentication before ML-KEM processing, complete binding of the key-establishing transcript, and fail-closed two-way key confirmation for managed IoT/NTN deployments. Its “authenticate first, compute later” design rejects forged initiations before expensive KEM processing, while each endpoint releases local session keys only after verifying the role-specific peer confirmation for the same transcript-derived state. Security analysis under a Dolev–Yao adversarial model shows that, within the stated freshness and provisioning assumptions, NTN-PQ-AKE supports mutual authentication, KEM-derived session-key freshness for uncompromised sessions, replay and man-in-the-middle resistance, transcript integrity, and scoped resource-exhaustion mitigation; it does not claim full perfect forward secrecy after later endpoint-key compromise. Across 100 measured runs after five warm-up runs, hardware profiling on an STM32F407G-DISC1 Cortex-M4 gives a mean combined Alice-and-Bob handshake cost of 3,812,967 cycles (SD 13,420; 95% CI half-width 2,662), or 22.70 ms at 168 MHz, with 52,356 B of text, 136 B of data, and 68,664 B of bss. OMNeT++ evaluation shows that NTN-PQ-AKE transmits 2,472 bytes and completes in approximately 524.67 ms on the modeled NTN channel.

IEEE Access•Jan 1, 2026•0 citations
Securing bandwidth-constrained Internet of Things (IoT) and edge networks during post-quantum migration creates an authentication trade-off: ML-KEM provides post-quantum key establishment, whereas post-quantum signatures increase certificate-chain size, verification cost, and handshake latency. We present HPQ-AKE, a sign-less hybrid authenticated key exchange for RSA-enabled IoT gateways and edge/cloud services that replaces transcript signatures with dual KEMs. HPQ-AKE combines ML-KEM-768 for post-quantum session secrecy and forward secrecy with RSA-OAEP for implicit mutual authentication, preserving existing RSA-enabled infrastructure during migration. We analyze HPQ-AKE in an extended Bellare-Rogaway model, separating classical authentication in the Random Oracle Model from session-key secrecy in the Quantum Random Oracle Model. Under the Module-LWE and RSA assumptions, it establishes AKE security, forward secrecy, and conditional KCI resistance under the long-term-key-only exposure assumptions. Evaluation combines x86 micro-benchmarking, analytical latency modeling, and 10,000-iteration Monte Carlo simulation. HPQ-AKE reduces modeled handshake transmission from 13,009 to 5,668 Bytes, a 56.4% reduction relative to a Hybrid TLS 1.3 Full handshake, while requiring 7.11 ms of total local computation on the measured x86 testbed. Under a simulated 50 kbps satellite-like link with 600 ms RTT and stochastic jitter, median latency is 1,914 ms, 31.4% below the 2,791 ms baseline. At 20 ms RTT, modeled break-even thresholds are 0.31 Mbps against the pre-cached baseline and 4.08 Mbps against the full baseline; both decrease as RTT increases. These x86-based results motivate evaluation on gateway-class IoT and edge platforms; performance on ARM gateways and unaccelerated microcontrollers remains unvalidated.
The advent of quantum computing poses significant threats to classical public-key cryptographic systems such as RSA and Elliptic Curve Cryptography, necessitating quantum-safe migration paths for Internet of Things (IoT) communication. The Ephemeral Diffie-Hellman Over COSE (EDHOC) protocol provides lightweight authenticated key exchange for resource-constrained IoT devices but lacks quantum-safe security and formally verified implementations. This thesis introduces KEMEDHOC, a KEM-based, signature-free, post-quantum variant of EDHOC that achieves mutual authentication through optimized integration of Key Encapsulation Mechanisms (KEMs). Compared to the direct adaptation, KEMEDHOC reduces noticeably message size (by over \textbf{33\%}) and handshake time (by \textbf{15\%}), while maintaining comparable security levels. Formal verification, at design-level, using ProVerif confirms that KEMEDHOC preserve all core EDHOC security properties, including mutual authentication, confidentiality, and forward secrecy. Verified implementations (EDHOC* and KEMEDHOC*) developed in F* and Low* ensure functional correctness, memory safety, and timing constant-time behavior, down to verified C code through KaRaMel compiler. Overall, this thesis delivers the first end-to-end formally verified post-quantum variant of EDHOC, demonstrating that formal assurance and post-quantum security can be obtained efficiently in lightweight key exchange protocols.
Post-quantum authenticated key exchange is needed for Internet of Things (IoT) systems facing quantum-enabled adversaries, but signature-heavy post-quantum handshakes remain costly for constrained devices and long-delay non-terrestrial network (NTN) links. This paper proposes NTN-PQ-AKE, a lightweight, transcript-bound authenticated key exchange for managed IoT/NTN deployments. The protocol avoids online post-quantum signatures by combining the Module-Lattice-Based Key-Encapsulation Mechanism (ML-KEM) with provisioned symmetric token material, replay-window checking, transcript-bound derivation using the HMAC-based Key Derivation Function (HKDF), and two-way confirmation tags. Its principal novelty relative to the KEM-based baselines considered here is the joint provision of pair-scoped pre-authentication before ML-KEM processing, complete binding of the key-establishing transcript, and fail-closed two-way key confirmation for managed IoT/NTN deployments. Its “authenticate first, compute later” design rejects forged initiations before expensive KEM processing, while each endpoint releases local session keys only after verifying the role-specific peer confirmation for the same transcript-derived state. Security analysis under a Dolev–Yao adversarial model shows that, within the stated freshness and provisioning assumptions, NTN-PQ-AKE supports mutual authentication, KEM-derived session-key freshness for uncompromised sessions, replay and man-in-the-middle resistance, transcript integrity, and scoped resource-exhaustion mitigation; it does not claim full perfect forward secrecy after later endpoint-key compromise. Across 100 measured runs after five warm-up runs, hardware profiling on an STM32F407G-DISC1 Cortex-M4 gives a mean combined Alice-and-Bob handshake cost of 3,812,967 cycles (SD 13,420; 95% CI half-width 2,662), or 22.70 ms at 168 MHz, with 52,356 B of text, 136 B of data, and 68,664 B of bss. OMNeT++ evaluation shows that NTN-PQ-AKE transmits 2,472 bytes and completes in approximately 524.67 ms on the modeled NTN channel.