Paper 2024/1345

SoK: The Engineer’s Guide to Post-Quantum Cryptography for Embedded Devices

Abstract

Embedded systems are flexible and cost-effective, and thus ubiquitous, making them attractive targets for cyberattacks. Yet deploying advanced cybersecurity on embedded devices is challenging due to their limited computational power and memory. An emerging risk is quantum computing, which, despite being in its early stages, threatens classical asymmetric cryptography. Given the long lifespan of embedded devices, engineers must urgently address post-quantum security. Post-quantum cryptography (PQC) gained prominence with NIST’s standardization initiative for suitable algorithms. During this process, the applicability of PQC to embedded devices became a key research topic. In this work, we survey recent research on PQC for embedded systems, emphasizing applicability to specific use cases rather than focusing solely on PQC algorithms. We provide an overview of the state of the art in PQC and analyze, systematize, and contrast prior work for the three critical embedded use cases: secure communication, secure boot, and secure updates. Overall, PQC already performs competitively with classical cryptography algorithms. However, when performance and memory constraints are an issue, use case-specific considerations should be taken into account when selecting an algorithm for embedded devices. With our findings, we help developers understand the current state of research and its impact from an integration perspective.