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Information technology / Cybersecurity and privacy

Cryptography

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Displaying 1 - 25 of 140

Considerations for Achieving Crypto Agility: Strategies and Practices

June 29, 2026
Author(s)
Elaine Barker, Lidong Chen, David Cooper, Dustin Moody, Andrew Regenscheid, Murugiah Souppaya, William Newhouse, Russell Housley, Sean Turner, William C. Barker, Karen Kent
Cryptographic (crypto) agility refers to the capabilities needed to replace and adapt cryptographic algorithms in protocols, applications, software, hardware, firmware, and infrastructures while preserving security and ongoing operations. This white paper

Status Report on the Second Round of the Additional Digital Signature Schemes for the NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization Process

May 14, 2026
Author(s)
Dustin Moody, Gorjan Alagic, Maxime Bros, Pierre Ciadoux, Quynh Dang, Thinh Dang, John Kelsey, Jacob Lichtinger, Yi-Kai Liu, Carl Miller, Rene Peralta, Ray Perlner, Angela Robinson, Hamilton Silberg, Daniel Smith-Tone, Noah Waller
NIST is in the process of evaluating public-key digital signature algorithms for potential standardization to protect sensitive information into the foreseeable future, including after the advent of quantum computers. Any signature scheme that is

NIST CSWP 37A Automation of the NIST Cryptographic Module Validation Program

March 16, 2026
Author(s)
Christopher Celi, Alexander Calis, Murugiah Souppaya, William Barker, Karen Kent, Raoul Gabiam, Stephan Mueller, Yi Mao, Barry Fussell, Andrew Karcher, Douglas Boldt
The Cryptographic Module Validation Program (CMVP) validates third-party assertions that cryptographic module implementations satisfy the requirements of Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) Publication 140-3, Security Requirements for

Bridging the Gap between Standards on Random Number Generation: Comparison of SP 800-90 Series and AIS 20/31

January 29, 2026
Author(s)
Elaine Barker, John Kelsey, Kerry McKay, Johannes Mittmann, Matthias Peter, Werner Schindler, Meltem Sonmez Turan
This report studies the cryptographic random number generation standards and guidelines written by BSI and NIST, namely AIS 20/31 and SP 800-90 Series. The aim of this report is to compare these publications, focusing on the similarities and differences of

NIST First Call for Multi-Party Threshold Schemes

January 20, 2026
Author(s)
Luis Teixeira D'Aguiar Norton Brandao, Rene Peralta
This document calls for public submissions of multi-party threshold schemes, and other related crypto-systems, to support the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in gathering a public body of reference materials on advanced

Practical Attack on All Parameters of the HPPC Signature Scheme

January 2, 2026
Author(s)
Pierre Briaud, Maxime Bros, Ray Perlner, Daniel Smith-Tone
HPPC is a multivariate signature scheme submitted to the NIST PQC standardization process in response to the recent call for additional signature schemes. We show that, despite some non-standard notational choices in the submission document, HPPC can be

Recommendation for Random Bit Generator (RBG) Constructions

September 25, 2025
Author(s)
Elaine Barker, John Kelsey, Kerry McKay, Allen Roginsky, Meltem Sonmez Turan
The NIST Special Publication (SP) 800-90 series of documents supports the generation of high-quality random bits for cryptographic and non-cryptographic use. SP 800-90A, Recommendation for Random Number Generation Using Deterministic Random Bit Generators

Exploiting SNOVA's Structure in the Wedge Product Attack

September 24, 2025
Author(s)
Thai Hung LE, Maxime Bros, Jacob Lichtinger, Brice Minaud, Ray Perlner, Daniel Smith-Tone, Cristian Valenzuela
Post-quantum cryptography (PQC) aims to develop cryptographic schemes secure against quantum adversaries. One promising class of digital signature schemes is based on multivariate quadratic equations, with Unbalanced Oil and Vinegar (UOV) being a leading

NIST Special Publication 800-227, Recommendations for Key-Encapsulation Mechanisms

September 18, 2025
Author(s)
Gorjan Alagic, Elaine Barker, Lidong Chen, Dustin Moody, Angela Robinson, Hamilton Silberg, Noah Waller
A key-encapsulation mechanism (KEM) is a set of algorithms that can be used by two parties under certain conditions to securely establish a shared secret key over a public channel. A shared secret key that is established using a KEM can then be used with

Addressing Visibility Challenges with TLS 1.3 within the Enterprise

September 17, 2025
Author(s)
William Newhouse
The Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol is widely deployed to secure network traffic. TLS 1.3 has been strengthened so that even if a TLS-enabled server is compromised, the contents of its previous TLS communications are still protected—also known as

Fiscal Year 2024 Annual Report for NIST Cybersecurity and Privacy Program

April 28, 2025
Author(s)
Patrick O'Reilly, Kristina Rigopoulos
Throughout Fiscal Year 2024 (FY 2024) — from October 1, 2023, through September 30, 2024 — the NIST Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) Cybersecurity and Privacy Program successfully responded to numerous challenges and opportunities in security and

Requirements for Cryptographic Accordions

April 11, 2025
Author(s)
Yu Long Chen, Michael Davidson, Morris Dworkin, John Kelsey, Yu Sasaki, Meltem Sonmez Turan, Alyssa Thompson, Nicky Mouha, Donghoon Chang
This report introduces the cryptographic accordion as a tweakable, variable-input-length strong pseudorandom permutation (VIL-SPRP) that is constructed from an underlying block cipher. An accordion facilitates the cryptographic processing of messages of

A Security Perspective on the Web3 Paradigm

February 25, 2025
Author(s)
Dylan Yaga, Peter Mell
Web3 is a proposed vision for the future of the internet that is restructured to be more user-centric with an emphasis on decentralized data. Users would own and manage their personal data, and systems would be decentralized and distributed. Digital tokens

Report on the Block Cipher Modes of Operation in the NIST SP 800-38 Series

September 10, 2024
Author(s)
Nicky Mouha, Morris J. Dworkin
This report focuses on the NIST-recommended block cipher modes of operation specified in NIST Special Publications (SP) 800-38A through 800-38F. The goal is to provide a concise survey of relevant research results about the algorithms and their

Module-Lattice-Based Digital Signature Standard

August 13, 2024
Author(s)
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Thinh Dang, Jacob Lichtinger, Yi-Kai Liu, Carl Miller, Dustin Moody, Rene Peralta, Ray Perlner, Angela Robinson
Digital signatures are used to detect unauthorized modifications to data and to authenticate the identity of the signatory. In addition, the recipient of signed data can use a digital signature as evidence in demonstrating to a third party that the

Module-Lattice-Based Key-Encapsulation Mechanism Standard

August 13, 2024
Author(s)
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Gorjan Alagic, Quynh Dang, Dustin Moody, Angela Robinson, Hamilton Silberg, Daniel Smith-Tone
A key-encapsulation mechanism (KEM) is a set of algorithms that, under certain conditions, can be used by two parties to establish a shared secret key over a public channel. A shared secret key that is securely established using a KEM can then be used with

Stateless Hash-Based Digital Signature Standard

August 13, 2024
Author(s)
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), David Cooper
This standard specifies the stateless hash-based digital signature algorithm (SLH-DSA). Digital signatures are used to detect unauthorized modifications to data and to authenticate the identity of the signatory. In addition, the recipient of signed data

Interactive Simulations of Backdoors in Neural Networks

May 21, 2024
Author(s)
Peter Bajcsy, Maxime Bros, Matthew Coudron
This work addresses the problem of planting and defending cryptographic-based backdoors in artificial intelligence models. The motivation comes from our lack of understanding and the implications of using cryptographic techniques for planting undetectable

Evaluating the security of CRYSTALS-Dilithium in the quantum random oracle model

April 29, 2024
Author(s)
Kelsey Jackson, Carl A. Miller, Daochen Wang
In the wake of recent progress on quantum computing hardware, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is standardizing cryptographic protocols that are resistant to attacks by quantum adversaries. The primary digital signature scheme that

Practical Attack on All Parameters of the DME Signature Scheme

April 28, 2024
Author(s)
Pierre Briaud, Maxime Bros, Ray Perlner, Daniel Smith-Tone
DME is a multivariate scheme submitted to the call for additional signatures recently launched by NIST. Its performance is one of the best among all the candidates. The public key is constructed from the alternation of very structured linear and non-linear

Improved Cryptanalysis of HFERP: Unseen Implications of the Simple Attack

April 13, 2024
Author(s)
Max Cartor, Ryann Cartor, Hiroki Furue, Daniel Smith-Tone
In this paper we introduce a new attack on the multivariate encryption scheme HFERP, a big field scheme including an extra variable set, additional equations of the UOV or Rainbow shape as well as additional random polynomials. Our attack brings several

Post-Quantum Cryptography, and the Quantum Future of Cybersecurity

April 9, 2024
Author(s)
Yi-Kai Liu, Dustin Moody
We review the current status of efforts to develop and deploy post-quantum cryptography on the Internet. Then we suggest specific ways in which quantum technologies might be used to enhance cybersecurity in the near future and beyond. We focus on two goals

Optimizing Implementations of Boolean Functions

January 31, 2024
Author(s)
Meltem Sonmez Turan
Symmetric cryptography primitives are constructed by iterative applications of linear and nonlinear layers. Constructing efficient circuits for these layers, even for the linear one, is challenging. In 1997, Paar proposed a heuristic to minimize the number

Cryptographic Module Validation Program (CMVP) Security Policy Requirements

November 17, 2023
Author(s)
David Hawes, Alexander Calis, Roy Crombie
NIST Special Publication (SP) 800-140Br1 is to be used in conjunction with ISO/IEC 19790 Annex B and ISO/IEC 24759 Section 6.14. This Special Publication modifies only those requirements identified in this document. NIST SP 800-140Br1 also specifies the
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