NIST announces the release of Draft NISTIR 8214, Threshold Schemes for Cryptographic Primitives. This publication provides a high-level overview of the possibilities that threshold schemes bring for enhancing the robustness of cryptographic primitive implementations. With its release, NIST also intends to initiate a discussion about the standardization of threshold schemes.
The goal of this document is to help readers understand the challenges and opportunities offered by threshold cryptography, typically as a tradeoff between different security properties desired in implementations of cryptographic primitives (e.g., signatures, encryption). Draft NISTIR 8214 also considers the implications of potential standardization for the validation and use of practical implementations of threshold cryptographic schemes.
The comment period ends October 22, 2018. Comments may be submitted to threshold-crypto [at] nist.gov (threshold-crypto[at]nist[dot]gov) with the Subject “Comments on Draft NISTIR 8214”.