NIST receives 40 qualified digital signature standard proposals
The National Institute of Standards and Technology recently said it has received 40 more qualified candidates for standardization of post-quantum cryptography (PQC) digital signature schemes, more than 10 months after the agency issued a call for more digital signature proposals.
The 40 qualified proposals came from a pool of 50 total submissions forwarded to NIST since it issued the call for more proposals in September of last year. All final submissions were due on June 1.
When asked by IQT a few months ago how many additional digital signature candidates NIST had received by that point, Dustin Moody, the NIST mathematician and frequent speaker at IQT events who is overseeing the PQC standardization process, declined to specify a number, saying he wanted to wait until after NIST had determined how many submissions met the qualifying criteria.
At that time, he also described submission processes, saying submitters had the option to provide NIST with preliminary versions of their candidates for review, with the ability to then update their submissions and re-submit by the June 1 final deadline.
See the PQC: Digital Signature Schemes project for the list of algorithms and their submission details. NIST is inviting feedback on all 40 candidates, and said the evaluation and analysis process is likely to last several years. NIST anticipates holding the fifth PQC standardization conference in April 2024, and Moody has said that initial PQC encryption algorithm and digital signature standards remain on track to be finalized next year.
IQT Research recently published the report “Post-Quantum Cryptography 2023: Market Opportunities After NIST.”
Dan O’Shea has covered telecommunications and related topics including semiconductors, sensors, retail systems, digital payments and quantum computing/technology for over 25 years.
