With the advent of quantum computers, traditional key exchange mechanisms are under threat, necessitating the development of new methods. Recently, Module-Lattice-Based Key Encapsulation Mechanism (ML-KEM) has been standardized as a quantum-safe key exchange method. Another emerging technique is Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) and its most famous protocol, BB84, which relies on the principles of quantum physics to exchange key information. Both techniques are considered secure against attacks by quantum computers, but their security is based on different principles. However, both key exchange types include a statistical component which, if an attacker were lucky, could allow circumventing these underlying hard problems. In this paper, we suggest that as a key exchange mechanism, BB84 should be run with security parameters comparable to those of ML-KEM, and analyze performance implications if this choice is taken. We illustrate the impact by estimating the number of raw bits required to generate a 256-bit symmetric key using BB84 and assessing the resulting performance implications. We further show how the BB84 finite-size security parameter can be chosen such that the post-processing failure probability is of the same order as the cumulative decapsulation-failure probability of ML-KEM. According to our results, the security parameter in BB84 should be at most 2−75.8 if statistical failure probability comparable to the ML-KEM decapsulation-failure target is desired. These findings offer general guidelines for BB84 parameter selection, with hybrid protocol design representing one potential application context.
As knowledge graphs are increasingly applied in sensitive domains such as healthcare, ensuring data confidentiality and fine-grained access control over outsourced graph data has become critical. In this paper, we propose EFKG, an Efficient and Fine-grained Access Control Encrypted Knowledge Graph construction scheme that simultaneously achieves data confidentiality, fine-grained access control, and high-performance multi-hop search over encrypted knowledge graphs. Compared with existing approaches, EFKG not only supports efficient single-hop and multi-hop retrieval with O(1) complexity per hop, but also satisfies fine-grained access control requirements in multi-user settings. Regarding security, we rigorously prove that EFKG achieves L-adaptive security under the standard leakage function paradigm. Extensive experiments on real-world datasets confirm that EFKG achieves microsecond-level single-hop search and scalable multi-hop traversal, offering a superior trade-off between efficiency, security, and functionality.
With Q-day approaching, the transition to post-quantum cryptography (PQC) has begun, with governments across the US, UK and EU mandating migration to quantum-resistant standards. This paper benchmarks the three NIST-standardised PQC algorithms—FIPS 203 (ML-KEM), FIPS 204 (ML-DSA) and FIPS 205 (SLH-DSA)—across key generation, signing and verification operations, measuring both computational performance and energy consumption on a range of constrained IoT-class devices, from the 32-bit Raspberry Pi 1 and Zero to the 64-bit Raspberry Pi 4, as well as commodity laptop hardware. Using the FNIRSI FNB58 USB power meter and OpenSSL 3.5, results show that ML-KEM and ML-DSA achieve energy and speed efficiency comparable to classical elliptic-curve cryptography across all tested architectures. However, SLH-DSA signing is inadvisable on constrained hardware: energy costs for SLH-DSA signing on 32-bit devices were up to 243% higher than on equivalent 64-bit hardware, making it impractical for resource-limited IoT deployments. These findings have direct implications for IoT security practitioners planning PQC migration.
Quantum computing poses a significant threat to blockchain systems that rely on elliptic curve cryptography and other classical security mechanisms. Algorithms such as Shor’s and Grover’s can weaken or completely break the cryptographic foundations of current blockchain networks, exposing them to risks including private key recovery, transaction forgery, consensus manipulation, and harvest-now-decrypt-later attacks. This paper presents a systems framework for designing quantum-resilient blockchains by integrating post-quantum cryptographic standards, threat modeling, architectural redesign, governance mechanisms, and migration planning. The study evaluates major post-quantum cryptographic primitives, assesses their suitability for blockchain environments, and proposes a layered architecture grounded in crypto-agility, defense-in-depth, and forward secrecy. A structured migration strategy is also introduced to support the transition of existing blockchain networks toward post-quantum security while maintaining operational continuity and stakeholder trust. The framework provides practical guidance for researchers, developers, and policymakers preparing blockchain ecosystems for the post-quantum era.
MLWE is a fundamental hard problem in post-quantum lattice cryptography. Standard Σ-protocols perform poorly for multiple MLWE statements due to high communication and computation costs. This paper presents an amortized Σ-protocol for MLWE using a lightweight fold-split-fold technique that decomposes norm-bounded error vectors without relying on NTT, MLE, or sum-check protocols. The protocol achieves completeness, special soundness, and non-abort SHVZK with constant-round interaction and lightweight verification. The construction avoids complex tools and provides an efficient batch proof mechanism, offering a simple and practical solution for post-quantum cryptographic applications.
Quantum computing poses significant challenges to traditional zero-knowledge proof schemes based on number-theoretic assumptions. As a result, code-based cryptography has attracted increasing attention for its resistance against quantum computing. In this paper, we study the Rank Syndrome Decoding problem (RSD) and investigate its ZK proof formulation within the MPC-in-the-Head framework. To prove the possession of a secret witness, we reformulate the secret witness as a mixed-field matrix multiplication preserving the rank constraint, and then obtain a representation that aligns naturally with the local-view paradigm of MPC-in-the-Head. Utilizing this value-to-calculation technique, we introduce the RSD relation into a ZKBoo-style (2, 3)-secret-sharing MPC-in-the-Head framework and obtain an RSD-based zero-knowledge proof scheme via mixed-field secret sharing. The resulting scheme reduces the proof size relative to generic formulations while preserving completeness, soundness, and zero-knowledge for the interactive protocol. The Fiat-Shamir non-interactive extension is analyzed only in the classical random oracle model; we do not claim QROM security for this variant.
Electronic voting requires the simultaneous admission of only legitimate participants, ballot uniqueness, vote confidentiality, storage integrity, and result verifiability. Blockchain alone does not solve these problems, since ledger immutability does not guarantee anonymity, ballot correctness, or reduced trust concentration. The purpose of this work is to develop a parameterizable research framework for electronic voting scenarios with enhanced cryptographic protection, allowing the security level to be varied according to the requirements of a voting scenario. The main contribution of the work is a parameterizable research architecture for composing and experimentally comparing electronic voting configurations with different security and computational profiles. The cryptographic and audit mechanisms integrated into this architecture include blind-signature-based anonymous authorization, encrypted ballot submission, blockchain-style audit, receipt verification, homomorphic tally publication, and threshold-supported tally artifacts. These mechanisms are not proposed as new cryptographic primitives; rather, they are integrated into a reproducible prototype to study how their combination affects verifiability, privacy support, auditability, and computational cost. Compared with basic blockchain-based voting prototypes, this architecture explicitly separates security, privacy, and verifiability profiles and makes their computational cost observable. The implemented prototype is used as an experimental platform for analyzing supported security properties, threat modeling, and computational cost estimation. The results show that authentication, anonymous token issuance, and receipt verification maintain an almost constant cost at the studied scale, while the main cryptographic burden is associated with encrypted ballot submission and threshold-supported tally publication. The scientific novelty of the work lies in constructing a parameterizable architecture that integrates several cryptographic mechanisms and a blockchain audit layer into one reproducible research prototype. At the same time, the proposed approach retains prototype-level limitations associated with the absence of a full zero-knowledge proof stack, independently deployed threshold authorities, and coercion-resistance mechanisms.
UAV-based remote sensing systems are increasingly deployed in smart surveillance, disaster response, environmental monitoring, and critical infrastructure inspection. In these applications, aerial sensing platforms must transmit telemetry, control commands, and observation data securely and reliably under strict latency, energy, and computational constraints. However, existing security approaches often fail to jointly provide lightweight payload confidentiality, quantum-resilient key establishment, and adaptive communication protection suitable for dynamic and resource-constrained aerial sensing environments. To address this challenge, this paper proposes an energy-aware post-quantum hybrid cryptographic framework for secure and low-latency UAV remote sensing communications in UAV-IoT mission networks. The proposed framework integrates Ascon-based authenticated encryption for low-overhead protection of remote sensing payloads and mission telemetry, ML-KEM-based post-quantum session-key establishment for long-term resilience against quantum-era threats, and an AI-driven adaptive rekeying mechanism that dynamically adjusts key-refresh decisions according to threat level, residual energy, mobility state, channel stability, anomaly density, traffic sensitivity, link type, and mission progression. Accordingly, rekeying is treated not as a static maintenance process but as an intelligent and context-aware cryptographic control function that adapts communication security to evolving mission and sensing conditions. The framework is evaluated across twenty progressively demanding scenarios involving different UAV counts, sensor densities, payload sizes, communication modes, and adversarial settings relevant to real-time remote sensing operations. Experimental results demonstrate a secure delivery rate of 99.2%, attack detection and mitigation effectiveness of 98.9%, end-to-end encryption latency of 8.7 ms, throughput of 5.03 Mbps, energy overhead of 11.6 mJ/session, rekeying overhead of 2.9 mJ/event, session resilience of 96.4%, and integrity verification success of 99.1%. These findings show that the proposed framework provides a practical and scalable contribution to post-quantum secure UAV remote sensing by unifying lightweight authenticated encryption, ML-KEM-based quantum-resilient key establishment, and AI-driven adaptive rekeying within a resilient aerial-terrestrial communication architecture.
In this study, we propose a hybrid cryptanalytic technique targeting the RSA cryptosystem when instantiated with small private exponents. By integrating the continued fraction approach with Coppersmith's lattice-based technique, we formulate a novel vulnerability framework. Utilizing an innovative relationship extracted from continued fraction convergents, we deduce an improved upper bound for the secret key: d < N1-alpha/3-gamma/2. In this context, alpha := log(N )e and gamma := log(N )|p + q - S|, where S serves as a known approximation of the prime sum p + q. As an extension of our preliminary conference proceedings, this paper supplies comprehensive proofs for all theoretical propositions, performs a comprehensive parameter sensitivity evaluation, and provides bounds for partial prime exposure scenarios. Empirical evaluations confirm the theoretical mechanics of our framework, demonstrating that it offers improved bounds in specific partial leakage scenarios compared to traditional lattice-only baselines.
Electroencephalography (EEG)-based brain-computer interface (BCI) systems pose significant privacy risks, as EEG data remain vulnerable to inference and reconstruction attacks. Conventional privacy-preserving techniques, including data anonymization, encryption, and perturbation, frequently compromise data utility or prove ineffective against advanced adversaries. To address these limitations and balance utility and privacy, we propose a quantum-inspired, differential privacy-based generative adversarial network (Q-DP-GAN). Unlike classical GANs, which lack adaptive privacy mechanisms during training, our method uses quantum-inspired stochasticity to dynamically calibrate noise and the privacy budget. The experimental results demonstrate that Q-DP-GAN is more robust to membership inference and reconstruction attacks than existing approaches. Evaluation on the widely used BCI Competition IV Datasets 2A and 2B indicates that our framework produces high-quality synthetic EEG data while maintaining utility and data confidentiality for BCI classification tasks.
Proxy signatures enable the secure delegation of signing authority, which is particularly useful in resource-constrained Internet of Things (IoT) environments. However, most existing schemes rely on classical hardness assumptions and therefore cannot resist quantum attacks. To address the challenge, we propose a post-quantum proxy signature scheme based on Dilithium for IoT scenarios. We first propose an asynchronous remote key generation (ARKG) scheme based on CRYSTALS-Kyber, enabling the delegator and proxy signer to generate proxy keys of Dilithium without real-time interaction. We further integrate ARKG with the Dilithium signature scheme to construct a proxy signature scheme called DPS while ensuring the unlinkability of proxy signatures. Additionally, our proposed DPS achieves post-quantum security and provides unforgeability, distinguishability, verifiability, and undeniability with formal proofs. Experimental performance evaluation shows that our scheme yields significant efficiency gains over existing quantum-safe proxy signature solutions, with 10 & times; speedup for both the delegation and proxy signing phases, as well as a 2.4 & times; improvement in the verification phase.
In 2021, the SM9 identity-based cryptographic algorithm became an ISO/IEC international standard, marking a significant advancement in China’s commercial cryptography technology and international standardization capabilities. The SM9 key exchange protocol, a component of the SM9 algorithm suite, provides secure communication by establishing a shared symmetric key between two parties. However, in a group of n users, directly applying this key exchange protocol requires each user to perform O(n) encryption operations and transmit an O(n)-sized ciphertext to ensure confidentiality, which becomes highly inefficient for large groups. To enable efficient secure group communication, we first develop a batch multi-signature algorithm based on SM9, and then we propose a dynamic asymmetric group key agreement (SMDAGKA) protocol based on this method. Our protocol reduces the required encryption operations and ciphertext size to O(1), significantly improving efficiency. Security proofs demonstrate that our scheme achieves a high level of security, and performance analysis shows that it incurs relatively lower computational overhead than related protocols.
Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) migration to National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) 203, 204, and 205 under the National Security Agency (NSA) Commercial National Security Algorithm Suite (CNSA) 2.0 is a multi-year, multi-domain transformation across cloud, enterprise, embedded, operational technology (OT), tactical, and national-security systems. Anthropic’s Claude Mythos Preview (April 2026) introduces artificial intelligence (AI)-accelerated cybersecurity capabilities that intersect this migration directly, performing autonomous reasoning against previously unknown vulnerabilities in production software—a qualitative departure from signature-based and static and dynamic application security testing (SAST/DAST) tooling. Drawing on federal guidance from NIST, NSA, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and on independent analyses from the Centre for Emerging Technology and Security (CETaS) and the UK AI Security Institute, we present a lifecycle and architecture analysis of how Mythos-class models alter PQC migration timelines, risk surfaces, lifecycle dependencies, and architectural constraints. Modeling Mythos as both accelerator and destabilizer, we derive an analytic projection of a compressed two-to-four-year migration window for highest-exposure systems, against traditional baselines of five-to-ten years for small organizations and twelve-to-fifteen-plus years for large enterprises. The compression collapses human-labor bottlenecks in discovery, planning, and code modification, not cryptography itself. We propose a lifecycle-aligned migration model, an updated cost model, and governance requirements for frontier-model access. The binding constraint shifts domain-conditionally: defender capacity at adversary tempo governs software-analytical phases, while non-compressible external cadence governs embedded and regulated domains.
Deploying post-quantum cryptography on highly constrained devices remains challenging due to the large key sizes and substantial storage and memory-traffic demands of leading lattice-based schemes. Although constructions such as Kyber, Dilithium, and NTRU offer strong resistance against quantum adversaries, their multi-kilobyte public keys and intensive memory access patterns limit practical adoption in microcontrollers, smart cards, and low-power edge environments. This work proposes a hybrid key-encapsulation mechanism that integrates a compact, seed-generated Module-LWE structure with a quantum-secure hash-based authentication layer. The design employs a small public seed to instantiate lattice matrices on demand via a lightweight pseudorandom generator and incorporates a Merkle-tree commitment to represent compressed auxiliary error information. Additional design considerations—including sparsity-aware secret keys, SIMD-friendly polynomial operations, and cache-efficient decryption paths—are intended to reduce runtime memory usage and computational overhead. The security of the proposed construction is analysed under both Module-LWE and hash-based one-way assumptions, with further consideration of constant-time execution and cache-line alignment to mitigate side-channel risks. This hybrid approach outlines a design pathway toward post-quantum key-encapsulation mechanisms suitable for deployment on memory-limited and energy-constrained platforms.
Secret sharing schemes distribute a secret among participants so that only authorised subsets can reconstruct it. In this paper, we focus on space-efficient secret sharing and show that matrix normal forms can significantly reduce share sizes while achieving computational security properties. Our scheme is implemented within an online secret sharing architecture, where authenticated public data P is maintained and shares of private data Q are issued over a secure channel. We study an existing probabilistic matrix-based approach to share size reduction and prove that the expected number of iterations of the underlying cyclic vector algorithm is small, yielding an expected polynomial runtime. We then design a novel deterministic method based on the Frobenius canonical normal form, avoiding reliance on cyclic vector techniques, and derive its runtime complexity. This yields a space-efficient secret sharing scheme that is computationally secure under a suitably defined adversary model. We have implemented our algorithm in the computer algebra system Maple as an Open Source project and provide an evaluation of its performance. Our results demonstrate that matrix normal forms can provide a suitable mathematical framework for secure and practical secret sharing.
Modern instant messaging systems require end-to-end (E2E) security guarantees while operating over server-mediated infrastructures that cannot be fully trusted. At the same time, the impending transition to post-quantum cryptography raises nontrivial challenges for the design of secure messaging protocols that preserve these guarantees. In this work, we present the design of a post-quantum end-to-end secure protocol for instant messaging applications under an untrusted relay model. The proposed construction relies on lattice-based primitives standardized by NIST, namely ML-KEM for key establishment and ML-DSA for authentication, and follows a Double-KEM pattern combined with explicit context binding to derive an E2E session key known only to the communicating clients. The server acts solely as an authenticated relay and never gains access to plaintext messages or session keys. In addition to the protocol design, we complement the protocol description with an automated symbolic verification using ProVerif, establishing injective mutual authentication and session-key secrecy under a Dolev-Yao adversary model. Finally, we characterize the computational cost of different authentication and verification policies and evaluate the performance of the handshake on heterogeneous cloud-based architectures. The results provide practical insight into the feasibility of deploying post-quantum end-to-end secure protocols within existing instant messaging infrastructures.
Private cloud object stores provide infrastructure isolation but leave application-layer data exposed to insider threats and compromised credentials. This paper presents an engineering integration of an Add-Rotate-XOR (ARX) block cipher and multi-bit Least Significant Bit (LSB) steganography into an end-to-end pipeline for private MinIO object storage. The cipher, KREA v2, is a SPECK-64/128 derived ARX construction with three application-driven choices: CRC32 key whitening, byte-aligned rotations (alpha=7, beta=2), and deterministic CTR-mode nonces. Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) trail analysis matches SPECK-64/128's minimum-trail weights through rounds 1-4. KREA v2 ciphertext meets standard keystream-quality preconditions (NIST SP 800-22 battery, 49.98% mean avalanche, Shannon entropy 7.9992-7.9998 bits/byte across realistic XML, JSON, video, and HTTP/2 payloads). Modified LSB (MLSB) embeds 3 bits per RGB channel with an XOR watermark at 37-38 dB Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR), providing 3 & times; standard-LSB capacity. Steganalysis uses chi-square and RS detectors plus a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) detector (Yedroudj-Net) trained on 8000 BOSSBase-1.01 cover/stego pairs; CNN area under the ROC curve is >= 0.999 against the watermarked variant. The MinIO pipeline runs at 355.1 ms (68.6% network I/O) with 100% message fidelity. The XOR watermark increases RS detectability above 75% capacity; a 200-image ablation cuts median RS detection (0.289 to 0.000) and mean (0.342 to 0.130) in a sparse-keystream variant, prioritised for follow-on full-scale evaluation. The architecture is offered as a documented engineering integration with explicit security caveats and threat-model boundaries, not as a production-hardened cryptographic primitive.
Multi-party private set union (MPSU) allows multiple parties to compute a union without disclosing private inputs, but most existing protocols focus on balanced settings with comparable input sizes. In large-repository update scenarios, a leader maintains a massive base set while contributors submit small update sets; directly using balanced MPSU makes the online cost scale with the leader's repository size. We propose AegisUnion, an asymmetric MPSU protocol tailored to large-repository updates. AegisUnion separates repository-dependent computation from online update processing through an offline oblivious key-value store (OKVS) encoding phase. In the online phase, contributors perform private membership determination, cross-contributor private deduplication, conditional payload sharing, and secret-shared shuffling, without revealing raw inputs, repository-overlap relations, inter-contributor duplicates, or the source of each output element. Under the semi-honest model, AegisUnion tolerates any coalition of corrupted parties as long as at least one party remains honest, without non-collusion assumptions. Experiments show that, as the repository grows from 214 to 218, the online time remains stable at 663-715 ms. At repository size 218 and contributor update bound 210, AegisUnion achieves about 455 & times; and 454 & times; lower online time than symmetric-key-based MPSU and public-key-based MPSU baselines, respectively, and about 271 & times; and 575 & times; lower online communication.
A cryptographic hash function should dissipate patterns, such that highly related inputs are transformed into unrelated outputs. This property, known as diffusion, has been effectively measured on SHA-256 via the Strict Avalanche Criterion (SAC) throughout the 64 rounds of compression. Additionally, variants of SHA-256 with individual sub-functions removed have previously been tested. In this study, the previous work is expanded; all combinations of the seven SHA-256 sub-functions are tested for SAC, throughout the 64 rounds of compression. The threshold as to whether a variant passes the SAC is calculated with the Bonferroni Method, which results in a relaxed threshold as compared to previous measures. The SAC of each sub-function variant is compared with the SAC of variants with shared sub-functions. The sub-functions Sigma 1, Integer Addition, Choose, and Message Scheduler are found to consistently contribute to SAC at the earliest rounds, throughout all combinations.
Mobile Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems are emerging as a fundamental part of modern smart environments, enabling automatic identification, tracking, and data exchange among different mobile platforms. While these systems are increasingly being adopted, they have a major drawback: an RFID tag has very little computational power, and the wireless communication channels can be attacked by adversaries. Several authentication and key management mechanisms to protect data and provide secure access have been proposed to solve these problems. In this study, we propose a new scheme that improves system security through explicit three-party mutual authentication, epoch-based pseudonym indexing for O(1) server lookup, and comprehensive resiliency against replay, impersonation, and man-in-the-middle attacks. An in-depth security analysis, along with performance evaluation, substantiates that the proposed protocol improves privacy and resilience without losing compatibility with low-cost RFID tags equipped only to perform lightweight cryptographic functions. This protocol also provides epoch-based unlinkability and is well suited for large-scale deployments, as found in healthcare, logistics, and Internet of Things (IoT) applications.
