Quantum Safe Cryptography Based on Hash Functions: A Survey

Abstract

The use of public key cryptosystems range from securely encrypting emails and files to creating digital signatures for non-repudiation. The security of public key cryptosystems is based on computationally "unsolvable" complex mathematical problems. This tends to change with the introduction of quantum computers that undoubtedly pose a threat to the current schemes. In response to that extensive research has been conducted that resulted in several cryptosystems that are believed to be quantum resistant. This thesis presents a concise overview of multiple hash-based signature schemes and provides a comparative description and analysis of them. The comparisons are based on different signature scheme properties, such as key sizes, signature sizes and security level provided. The proposed quantum resistant schemes are also compared to the standard schemes used today, such as RSA and ECDSA.