We do not mean to criticize cryptographers who submitted proposals, including software implementations, to NIST PQC: after all, it cannot reasonably be expected from every cryptographer to also have expertise in software engineering. Instead, we suggest how standardization bodies like NIST can improve the software-submission process in future efforts to avoid such issues with submitted software. More specifically, we present PQClean, an extensive (continuous-integration) testing framework for PQC software, which now also contains "clean" implementations of the NIST round 3 candidate schemes. We argue that the availability of such a framework---either in an online continuous-integration setup, or just as an offline testing system---long before the submission deadline would have resulted in much better implementations included in NIST PQC submissions and overall would have saved the community and probably also NIST a lot of time and effort.
Category / Keywords: implementation / NIST PQC, post-quantum implementations, testing cryptographic software Original Publication (in the same form): Security Standardization Research 2022 Date: received 10 Mar 2022, last revised 13 Apr 2022 Contact author: matthias at kannwischer eu, peter at cryptojedi org, dstebila at uwaterloo ca, thom at thomwiggers nl Available format(s): PDF | BibTeX Citation Version: 20220413:131658 (All versions of this report) Short URL: ia.cr/2022/337