Status Report on the First Round of the NIST Lightweight Cryptography Standardization Process

Published

October 7, 2019

Author(s)

Meltem Sonmez Turan, Kerry A. McKay, Cagdas Calik, Dong Hoon Chang, Lawrence E. Bassham

Abstract

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is in the process of selecting one or more authenticated encryption and hashing schemes suitable for constrained environments through a public, competition-like process. In February 2019, 57 candidate algorithms were submitted to NIST for consideration. Among these, 56 met both the minimum acceptance criteria and submission requirements and were accepted as first-round candidates in April 2019, marking the beginning of the first round of the NIST Lightweight Cryptography Standardization Process. Due to the large number of submissions and the short timeline of the process, NIST has decided to eliminate some of the algorithms from consideration early in the first evaluation phase in order to focus analysis on the more promising submissions. This report describes the evaluation criteria and selection process based on public feedback and internal review of the first-round candidates and provides the list of 32 candidate algorithms selected for the second round of the evaluation process.

Citation

NIST Interagency/Internal Report (NISTIR) - 8268

Report Number

8268

NIST Pub Series

NIST Interagency/Internal Report (NISTIR)

Pub Type

NIST Pubs

Download Paper

DOI Link

Keywords

authenticated encryption, cryptography, hash functions, lightweight cryptography

Citation

Sonmez, M. , McKay, K. , Calik, C. , , D. and Bassham, L. (2019), Status Report on the First Round of the NIST Lightweight Cryptography Standardization Process, NIST Interagency/Internal Report (NISTIR), National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, [online], https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.IR.8268 (Accessed October 9, 2025)