A survey on NIST PQ signatures

TL;DR

This survey reviews the current landscape of post-quantum digital signature algorithms, focusing on NIST's round 3 finalists and alternatives, highlighting their design and security features in response to quantum threats.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the leading post-quantum signature schemes selected by NIST, summarizing their characteristics and development status.

Findings

CRYSTALS-DILITHIUM, FALCON, Rainbow, SPHINCS+ are key candidates

The surveyed algorithms aim to replace classical signatures in quantum-resistant cryptography

NIST's selection process guides future research and standardization efforts

Abstract

Shor's shockingly fast quantum algorithm for solving the period-finding problem is a threat for the most common public-key primitives, as it can be efficiently applied to solve both the Integer Factorisation Problem and the Discrete Logarithm Problem. In other words, many once-secure protocols have to be replaced by still-secure alternatives. Instead of relying, for example, on the RSA protocol, the Diffie-Hellman key-exchange or the (Elliptic Curve) Digital Signature Algorithm, many researchers moved their attention to the design and analysis of primitives which are yet to be broken by quantum algorithms. The urgency of the threat imposed by quantum computers led the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to open calls for both Post-Quantum Public-Keys Exchange Algorithms and Post-Quantum Digital Signature Algorithms. In this brief survey we focus on the round 3 finalists and alternate candidates for Digital Signatures: CRYSTALS-DILITHIUM, FALCON, Rainbow, SPHINCS+, GeMSS, Picnic.