On the Suitability of Post-Quantum Signature Schemes for Internet of Things

Public-key cryptography (PKC) provides confidentiality, data integrity, and user authentication. Particularly, nonrepudiation, authentication and integrity of transmitted messages are assured by public-key (PK) signature schemes. Since the presence of a large scale quantum computer would be a real threat to break currently used PK cryptographic algorithms, all security protocols based on the PK cryptographic algorithms are vulnerable to quantum-computer attacks. It needs to investigate possible alternatives, post-quantum cryptography (PQC), believed to be resistant to attacks from both classical and quantum computers. All the traditional PKC should be replaced with PQC for secure communications in post-quantum era. In this work, we evaluate the post-quantum signature schemes in terms of various metrics, performance, signature/key sizes, energy consumption, resistance to implementation attacks and adaptability to Internet protocols. We then investigate their suitability for Internet of Things based on these metrics.