Portable Implementation of Postquantum Encryption Schemes and Key Exchange Protocols on JavaScript-Enabled Platforms

Abstract EN

Quantum computers have the potential to solve some difficult mathematical problems efficiently and thus will inevitably exert a more significant impact on the traditional asymmetric cryptography.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has opened a formal call for the submission of proposals of quantum-resistant public-key cryptographic algorithms to set the next-generation cryptography standards.

Compared to powerful machines with ample amount of hardware resources such as racks of servers and IoT devices, including the massive number of microcontrollers, smart terminals, and sensor nodes with limited computing capacity, should also have some postquantum cryptography features for security and privacy.

To ensure the correct execution of encryption algorithms on any platforms, the portability of implementation becomes more important.

As distinguished from C/C++, JavaScript is a popular cross-platform language that can be used for the web applications and some hardware platforms directly, and it could be one of the solutions of portability.

Therefore, we investigate and implement several recent lattice-based encryption schemes and public-key exchange protocols including Lizard, ring-Lizard, Kyber, Frodo, and NewHope in JavaScript, which are the active candidates of postquantum cryptography due to their applicabilities and efficiencies.

We show and compare the performance of our JavaScript implementation on web browsers, embedded device Tessel2, Android phone, and several JavaScript-enabled platforms on PC and Mac.

Our work shows that implementing lattice-based cryptography on JavaScript-enabled platforms is achievable and results in desirable portability.