Quantum-resistant digital signatures schemes for low-power IoT

TL;DR

This paper evaluates quantum-resistant digital signature schemes suitable for low-power IoT devices, focusing on NIST standardization efforts and comparing implementations of FALCON and Dilithium for their performance and practicality.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of promising post-quantum signature schemes, emphasizing their suitability for IoT applications and implementation considerations.

Findings

FALCON is optimized for verification speed, making it suitable for verification-heavy IoT scenarios.

Dilithium offers balanced signing and verification performance, suitable for general IoT use.

Implementation assessments highlight the trade-offs between security, efficiency, and resource constraints.

Abstract

Quantum computers are on the horizon to get to a sufficient size. These will then be able to break most of the encryption and signature schemes currently in use. This is the case for human interface devices as well as for IoT nodes. In this paper i am comparing some signature schemes currently in the process of standardization by the NIST. After explaining the underlying basis on why some schemes are different in some aspects compared to others i will evaluate which currently available implementations are better suited for usage in IoT use-cases. We will come to further focus on the most promising schemes FALCON and Dilithium, which differ in one signifiant aspect that makes FALCON worse for signing but very good for verification purposes.