liboqs nist-branch snapshot 2018-05

liboqs nist-branch snapshot 2018-05

About

The Open Quantum Safe (OQS) project has the goal of developing and prototyping quantum-resistant cryptography. More information on OQS can be found on our website: https://openquantumsafe.org/ and on Github at https://github.com/open-quantum-safe/.

liboqs is an open source C library for quantum-resistant cryptographic algorithms.

This branch of liboqs (nist-branch) focuses on incorporating submissions to the NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography standardization project. Details about nist-branch can be found in README.md. See in particular limitations on intended use.

This branch of liboqs can be used with the following Open Quantum Safe application integrations:

• OpenSSL 1.0.2: A prototype integration of liboqs-based key exchange into TLS 1.2 in our fork of OpenSSL 1.0.2; see the OQS-OpenSSL-1_0_2-stable branch of our OpenSSL fork's repository.

Release notes

This snapshot of nist-branch was released on May 30, 2018. Its release page on Github is https://github.com/open-quantum-safe/liboqs/releases/tag/nist-branch-snapshot-2018-05.

What's New

This is the second snapshot release of liboqs nist-branch.

New key encapsulation mechanisms

The following KEMs have been added in the 2018-05 snapshot release:

• BIG QUAKE: 3 parameterization: BIG_QUAKE_1, BIG_QUAKE_3, BIG_QUAKE_5 (contributed by Shravan Mashra (University of Waterloo))
• BIKE: 9 parameterizations: BIKE1-L1, BIKE1-L3, BIKE1-L5, BIKE2-L1, BIKE2-L3, BIKE2-L5, BIKE3-L1, BIKE3-L3, BIKE3-L5; optimized builds on Linux platforms with AVX/AVX2/AVX512 support (contributed by Nir Drucker and Shay Gueron (Amazon Web Services))
• LIMA: 6 parameterizations: Lima-2p-1024-CCA-KEM, Lima-2p-2048-CCA-KEM, Lima-sp-1018-CCA-KEM, Lima-sp-1306-CCA-KEM, Lima-sp-1822-CCA-KEM, Lima-sp-2062-CCA-KEM (contributed by Douglas Stebila (McMaster University))
• Saber: 3 parameterizations: LightSaber-KEM, Saber-KEM, FireSaber-KEM (contributed by Douglas Stebila (McMaster University))
• SIKE: 2 parameterizations: Sike-p503, Sike-p751 (contributed by Christian Paquin (Microsoft Research))

General improvements

• Can now be built with multi-threaded make (e.g., make -j8)
• The default pseudorandom number generator is now OpenSSL's RAND_bytes function for better performance; applications can choose a different PRNG at runtime
• example_kem matches documented example in https://github.com/open-quantum-safe/liboqs/wiki/Minimal-example-of-a-post-quantum-key-encapsulation-mechanism-(using-the-new-NIST-like)-API (contributed by Vlad Gheorghiu)

Fixes

• Fixed improperly built shared library
• Cleansed secret variables in example programs

Comparison to liboqs master

This snapshot release of nist-branch contains the following differences compared to the current version of liboqs master:

• Algorithms are formulated as key encapsulation mechanisms, rather than key exchange mechanisms.
• Integrations are "light touch" -- see README.md for more about integration philosophy.
• A different build process is used.
• A global randombytes function is available for random number generation, rather than the OQS_RAND object in master.
• Signature schemes are not yet supported.

Future work

Snapshot releases of nist-branch will be made monthly. Plans for the next snapshot release of nist-branch can be found online at https://github.com/open-quantum-safe/liboqs/projects/8.

By the end of June 2018, we aim to release a new version of our master branch that uses the same API as nist-branch.