Abstract
In this paper, we study implementations of post-quantum signature schemes on resource-constrained devices. We focus on verification of signatures and cover NIST PQC round-3 candidates Dilithium, Falcon, Rainbow, GeMSS, and SPHINCS+. We assume an ARM Cortex-M3 with 8 kB of memory and 8 kB of flash for code; a practical and widely deployed setup in, for example, the automotive sector. This amount of memory is insufficient for most schemes. Rainbow and GeMSS public keys are too big; SPHINCS+ signatures do not fit in this memory. To make signature verification work for these schemes, we stream in public keys and signatures. Due to the memory requirements for efficient Dilithium implementations, we stream in the public key to cache more intermediate results. We discuss the suitability of the signature schemes for streaming, adapt existing implementations, and compare performance.
This work was also presented at the third NIST post-quantum cryptography standardization workshop.
Thom Wiggers
Senior Cryptography Researcher
My research interests include (post-quantum) cryptography and protocols