High-performance and Anti-side Channel Attack Design of Lattice-based Post-quantum Cryptography

Post-quantum cryptography (PQC) [1] is a class of cryptography that can resist the high-speed
operations of quantum computers. In the final list of the US National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST), three of the four public key ciphers are lattice-based ciphers, namely Kyber,
Saber and NTRU [2]. Compared with cryptography based on other mathematical problems, latticebased cryptography requires fewer resources, and their security has been proven [3].
Since the Kyber parameters in Round 3 of NIST can be calculated using Number Theoretic
Transform (NTT) [4], the speed of hardware implementation is faster than other candidates, which
make Kyber have a huge advantage to win. However, the current Kyber hardware implementation
is not fast enough, takes up a lot of resources, and most implementations do not include features
such as anti-side channel capabilities. During my Ph.D period, I will conduct research from the
following aspects.
(1) Optimise the units in Kyber protocol, such as the signle-core multi-use kaccak module, the
secondary sampling and uniform distribution sampling module, the NTT module and the polynomial
multiplication module.
(2) Use optimized modules to design overall hardware implementation of Kyber, which is divided
into high-speed pipeline design and lightweight design.
(3) Research on the anti-side channel performance of overall hardware implementation of Kyber,
and design a Kyber hardware implementation that can resist multiple attacks.