High-Speed Implementation of Post-Quantum Cryptography Multivariate Signature Schemes
Date
Authors
Ferozpuri, Ahmed
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
Multivariate cryptosystems belong to the five most promising families of post-quantum cryptography (PQC) schemes. Among them, the Unbalanced Oil and Vinegar (UOV) and the Rainbow signature schemes have been extensively studied since 1999 and 2005, respectively. The main advantage of UOV is high confidence in its security; the disadvantages include large key and signature sizes. Rainbow is a multi-layer version of UOV that offers better performance, smaller keys, and smaller signatures. In this thesis, we present and compare hardware implementations of both schemes in high-performance Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). The optimization is for the minimum signature generation and verification time. The generation of keys is assumed to be done in software. Compared to the previous state-of-the-art high-speed implementation, the proposed design for Rainbow is more than twice as fast, and introduces two architectural innovations: a novel pivot calculation circuit and a memory based microprogrammed architecture. Additionally, in order to make benchmarking easier and fairer, our design follows a universal PQC hardware API, which allows for fair comparison with other post-quantum signature schemes, in particular those submitted to the NIST PQC Project. The design is intended to be made open-source to speed-up further optimizations. Additionally, we will provide a projection of scalability for larger security levels and future optimizations.
Description
This thesis has been embargoed for 1 year and will not be available until December 2018 at the earliest.
Keywords
Rainbow UOV, System solver, Hardware, Multivariate, Highspeed, FPGA