Score:7

What is the status of the NIST Lightweight Cryptography Standardisation Process?

ru flag

The NIST Computer Security Resource Center called for nominations for a process to standardise lightweight symmetric primitives in August 2018.

In the update talk in the 2019 Lightweight Cryptography Workshop, it was hoped that winners would be announced in 2021.

At the 2020 workshop, it was hoped that finalists would be chosen by the end of 2020 with the final round roughly one year to complete.

Finalists were announced in March 2021.

At the May 2022 workshop it was hoped that winners would be announced in 2022 and standardisation would begin, with standardisation to be completed in 2023.

The project homepage also notes the evaluation process as being expected to finish in late 2022.

As we approach the end of 2022, is there any further news on the progress of the process?

DannyNiu avatar
vu flag
NIST must be overwhelmed by the PQC and publication review project right now. If the donkeys and the elephants gets into another fight over budget, they might even face another shutdown soon.
Maarten Bodewes avatar
in flag
Slightly late, it seems that the bill has passed.
Maarten Bodewes avatar
in flag
A shoutout to the authors of "A Review of the NIST Lightweight Cryptography Finalists and Their Fault Analyses" to give a nice overview of the finalists and the performed analysis.
Swashbuckler avatar
mc flag
There isn't a lot of activity on the mail forum (https://groups.google.com/a/list.nist.gov/g/lwc-forum), maybe they plan on making the announcement next week.
Score:5
sa flag

My contact in NIST has told me that they were expecting to announce first week of January, but now it looks more like it will happen late in the same month.

This is unofficial but I expect it to be fully accurate.

Edit: NIST has now announced the Ascon family as the lightweight cryptography standard. See the announcement here

Daniel S avatar
ru flag
This seems to be consistent with a recent forum posting: https://groups.google.com/a/list.nist.gov/g/lwc-forum/c/ZjqbdDyO0Do
Daniel S avatar
ru flag
NIST has now announced the Ascon family as the lightweight cryptography to be standardised. See their [announcement](https://csrc.nist.gov/News/2023/lightweight-cryptography-nist-selects-ascon). Would you like to add this to your answer?
Paul Uszak avatar
cn flag
Would your contact be able to say which (if any) other external agencies were instrumental in the final selection process?
Daniel Apon avatar
co flag
This is an absolute trashy comment, Paul.
I sit in a Tesla and translated this thread with Ai:

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