Paper 2014/795

SPHINCS: practical stateless hash-based signatures

Daniel J. Bernstein and Daira Hopwood and Andreas Hülsing and Tanja Lange and Ruben Niederhagen and Louiza Papachristodoulou and Michael Schneider and Peter Schwabe and Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn

Abstract

This paper introduces a high-security post-quantum stateless hash-based signature scheme that signs hundreds of messages per second on a modern 4-core 3.5GHz Intel CPU. Signatures are 41 KB, public keys are 1 KB, and private keys are 1 KB. The signature scheme is designed to provide long-term $2^{128}$ security even against attackers equipped with quantum computers. Unlike most hash-based designs, this signature scheme is stateless, allowing it to be a drop-in replacement for current signature schemes.