Daily Dread Drip - Post-Quantum Cryptography Standards NIST

Post Summery:

NIST Announcement: NIST officially published three post-quantum cryptography (PQC) standards: ML-KEM (Kyber), ML-DSA (Dilithium), and SLH-DSA (Sphincs+), with a fourth, FN-DSA (Falcon), selected for future standardization.
IBM’s Involvement: IBM, along with partners, played a significant role in developing the winning algorithms and in the establishment of the PQC competition.
Quantum Computing Threat: Quantum computers, particularly with Shor's algorithm, pose a future threat to current cryptographic methods like RSA and elliptic curve encryption.
PQC Advantages: PQC relies on lattice-based problems that are much harder for quantum computers to solve, offering a new level of security.
Need for Agility: Emphasis on the need for "crypto agility," the ability to rapidly switch to new algorithms as threats evolve.
Future Technological Threats: Potential future risks include AI, side-channel attacks, in-memory processing, and photonic computing, which could challenge even PQC.
Realism in Security: Absolute security is unattainable, and the goal is to be "secure enough" for practical purposes, with PQC representing the best current approach.
Ongoing Evolution: PQC and crypto agility are steps toward continuous improvement in encryption, acknowledging that no system will be permanently secure.
Posted by /u/HeadJanitor