[pkix] Applied Quantum Resistant Crypto

["Dr. Pala" <[e-mail]>]

Hi all,

I was wondering if there are people interested in setting up some sort
of discussion forum where to discuss the deployment (from a practical
point of view) for QRC in their systems. The intent here would be to
share the experiences, provide feedback, and possibly even share
implementations/references/etc.

Moreover, being this quite a new field when it comes to real-world
applications, it would be interesting to understand the new requirements
so that we can plan for algorithm agility correctly and not having to go
through what we suffered in the past (and in some cases with current
protocols) to upgrade/switch among different schemes/algorithms.

For example, some of the topics might include:

  * How to deploy PKI services
  * Mixed environments considerations (QRC and "Traditional" Crypto)
  * Mixed environments (stateful vs. stateless)
  * Encryption and Key-Exchange for QRC - what are the options there (it
    seems auth is well understood, but other problems are still open)?
  * Are there implications for the deployment of PKIs we need to be
    aware of and are not currently mentioned/addressed?
  * Any real-world deployment out there (or plans for it)?
  * Algorithm Agility, what to plan for?
  * Applicability to Revocation Services

Most of the activities to standardize QRC in CMS/SecFirmware/etc. that I
can see are related to the use of Stateful HASHSIG and I have not seen
any "standardization" activities around stateless schemes (e.g.,
SPHINCS), but if I am wrong, please let me know (and if you could
provide some interesting links, that would be great). I think it would
be useful to understand how to practically deploy these new schemes and
how to refine / provide the building blocks required for their
implementation and deployment.

Here's some references:

Merkle Tree Signatures (Stateful):

  * https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-mcgrew-hash-sigs/
  * https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-housley-cms-mts-hash-sig/
  * https://www.ietf.org/id/draft-housley-suit-cose-hash-sig-04.txt
  * https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc8391/ (XMSS)
  * https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/063 (Viability of Post Quantum X.509
    Certs Paper)

  * Implementations:
      o https://github.com/cisco/hash-sigs

SPHINCS Related (Stateless):

  * https://sphincs.org/

  * Implementations:
      o https://sphincs.org/data/sphincs+-reference-implementation-20180313.tar.bz2

Other Relevant Links:

  * https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-truskovsky-lamps-pq-hybrid-x509/
  * https://csrc.nist.gov/Projects/Post-Quantum-Cryptography
  * http://test-pqpki.com/

I guess this is all for now - you can reply privately at the following
addresses:

    [e-mail]
    [e-mail]

Thanks,
Max

-- 
Best Regards,
Massimiliano Pala, Ph.D.
OpenCA Labs Director
OpenCA Logo