Our OC#1 winners are sharing their project’s results: Tecnalia. Project results and personal reflections from our OC#1 winners. From implementation to challenges and impact to PQ-REACT support and selection opportunities.

Tecnalia’s story

QUIET project aimed to study the effects that the different parameters defining a lattice may cause in the security of cryptographic schemes based on them. Considering the state-of-the-art attacks on those schemes, the goal was to analyse the impact of some selected parameters on the success or failure of a quantum attack. QUIET has considered the interest from PQ-REACT about PQC and its aim is to validate PQC algorithms security against a quantum attack.

One of the objectives from PQ-REACT is to build an open platform that will provide a portfolio of tools around an actual quantum computer, for evaluation of PQC algorithms and cryptanalytical methods. In this context, the security analysis of the different configuration parameters carried out in QUIET can enhance this open platform and assist with the selection of suitable parameters.

QUIET’s outcomes have been validated over QRISP, a framework being built within PQ-REACT, to replicate a quantum acceleration to the BKZ attack for LWE instances. There is a genuine interest on cryptography research using quantum technologies. PQC algorithms are starting to be implemented and released on different areas, however the attacks over them considering quantum acceleration are still a new topic. Even though quantum computers are still immature, and we are living on the NISQ era, the study on how the parametrization of PQC algorithms from the quantum perspective is needed.

QUIET is meant to study the parameters that affect the security of LWE-based schemes. The objective was to identify configuration parameters that are not very resilient, especially against quantum attacks, such as BKZ. The aim is to find a configuration with the lowest security possible so that we can break it using QRISP, and then increase security as much as possible.

QUIET was planned to design a possible quantum attack using QRISP. QRISP offers a high-level programming language for quantum algorithms and can be imported as Python module. The most important part is that it lets developers abstract from circuits by:

• Defining several quantum variables: quantum strings, quantum floats, quantum elements in Zp…
• Implementing the most popular quantum algorithms: QAOA, Shor, QFT, Grover.
• Allowing to simulate the execution or even connecting to QC to send the final transpiled circuits.

Having contact with the team developing QRISP has provided the project with a wealth of knowledge and the ability to emulate an attack on easily breakable LWE instances.

Our team was interested in gaining knowledge about the configuration of PQC lattices to ensure that security was at the expected level. In addition, it was important to know the level of vulnerability of PQC algorithms against quantum attacks such as BKZ.