Staff

[ Project Leader, Professor* ] Naofumi Homma

Research Activities

In recent years, as the research and development of large-scale quantum computers has become more active, there are concerns that many modern cryptography (especially public key cryptography) may be broken. Since cryptography is used for a long time once implemented, security against quantum computers is expected to be essential for future cryptographic systems. In particular, post-quantum cryptography (PQC) has been rapidly gaining attention in recent years as a cryptographic technology that ensures such security. In fact, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) aims to fully transition to PQC by 2035, and is formulating the first Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) in 2024. In Japan, the government’s Cryptography Committee is closely watching the research and development trends of PQC, and it is expected that its social implementation will gradually spread in the future.

In light of the above background, this research project aims to develop a highly efficient and secure implementation technology for PQC. In particular, when assuming the implementation of PQC on IoT terminals or edges, in addition to cyber attacks, physical attacks (attacks that physically access the system and steal secret information) pose a major risk. Among these, one of the most realistic threats is the side-channel attack, which exploits unintentional physical quantities (power consumption, electromagnetic radiation, processing time, etc.) during system operations to steal secret information and control in a non-destructive and non-invasive manner. Even for PQC, it is important to implement it with consideration for resistance to such side-channel attacks. Therefore, this research aims to develop implementation technology that combines high physical security (tamper resistance) and efficiency to solve the above issues. Specifically, through a comprehensive approach from algorithms to hardware and system implementation, we develop tamper-resistant and highly efficient software and hardware implementation technology for major PQC methods such as lattice-based, code-based, and multivariate polynomial cryptography.