Public Key Linting for ML-KEM and ML-DSA

Evangelos Karatsiolis; Franziskus Kiefer; Juliane Krämer; Mirjam Loiero; Christian Tobias; Maximiliane Weishäupl

Paper 2025/1241

Public Key Linting for ML-KEM and ML-DSA

Evangelos Karatsiolis, MTG

Franziskus Kiefer, Cryspen

Juliane Krämer, University of Regensburg

Mirjam Loiero, MTG

Christian Tobias, MTG

Maximiliane Weishäupl, University of Regensburg

Abstract

With the advancing standardization of post-quantum cryptographic schemes, the need for preparing the IT security infrastructure for integrating post-quantum schemes increases. The focus of this work is a specific part of the IT security infrastructure, namely public key infrastructures. For public certification authorities, it is crucial to guarantee the quality of public keys certified by them. To this end, linting is deployed, which describes the process of analyzing the content of a certificate with respect to predefined rules, the so-called lints. In this work, we initiate the study of lints for post-quantum cryptography. As a starting point, we choose lattice-based schemes and analyze the public keys of the NIST standards ML-KEM and ML-DSA. We base our analyses on the NIST FIPS standards and IETF documents. We formally describe the identified lints and classify them with respect to the property of the public key that the lint checks. We implement the lints for a common X.509 certificate linter and provide an open-source tool.

Metadata

Available format(s): PDF
Category: Public-key cryptography
Publication info: Published elsewhere. Major revision. SPIQE 2025
Keywords: ML-KEM ML-DSA PQC X.509 Linting
Contact author(s): evangelos karatsiolis @ mtg de
franziskus @ cryspen com
juliane kraemer @ ur de
maximiliane weishaeupl @ ur de
History: 2025-07-11: approved; 2025-07-04: received; See all versions
Short URL: https://ia.cr/2025/1241
License: CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2025/1241,
      author = {Evangelos Karatsiolis and Franziskus Kiefer and Juliane Krämer and Mirjam Loiero and Christian Tobias and Maximiliane Weishäupl},
      title = {Public Key Linting for {ML}-{KEM} and {ML}-{DSA}},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2025/1241},
      year = {2025},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/1241}
}