Paper 2025/812

Post-Quantum Cryptography in eMRTDs: Evaluating PAKE and PKI for Travel Documents

Nouri Alnahawi, Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences, European University of Technology
Melissa Azouaoui, NXP (Germany)
Joppe W. Bos, NXP (Belgium)
Gareth T. Davies, NXP (Belgium)
SeoJeong Moon, NXP (Belgium)
Christine van Vredendaal, NXP (Netherlands)
Alexander Wiesmaier, Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences, European University of Technology
Abstract

Passports, identity cards and travel visas are examples of machine readable travel documents (MRTDs) or eMRTDs for their electronic variants. The security of the data exchanged between these documents and a reader is secured with a standardized password authenticated key exchange (PAKE) protocol known as PACE. A new world-wide protocol migration is expected with the arrival of post-quantum cryptography (PQC) standards. In this paper, we focus on the impact of this migration on constrained embedded devices as used in eMRTDs. We present a feasibility study of a candidate post-quantum secure PAKE scheme as the replacement for PACE on existing widely deployed resource-constrained chips. In a wider context, we study the size, performance and security impact of adding post-quantum cryptography with a focus on chip storage and certificate chains for existing eMRTDs. We show that if the required post-quantum certificates for the eMRTD fit in memory, the migration of existing eMRTD protocols to their post-quantum secure equivalent is already feasible but a performance penalty has to be paid. When using a resource constrained SmartMX3 P71D600 smart card, designed with classical cryptography in mind, then execution times of a post-quantum secure PAKE algorithm using the recommended post-quantum parameter of the new PQC standard ML-KEM can be done in under a second. This migration will be aided by future inclusion of dedicated hardware accelerators and increased memory to allow storage of larger keys and improve performance.

Metadata
Available format(s)
PDF
Category
Implementation
Publication info
Preprint.
Keywords
post-quantum cryptographyelectronic travel documentsPAKEcryptography implementations
Contact author(s)
nouri alnahawi @ h-da de
melissa azouaoui @ nxp com
joppe bos @ nxp com
gareththomas davies @ nxp com
seojeong moon @ nxp com
christine cloostermans @ nxp com
alexander wiesmaier @ h-da de
History
2025-05-12: revised
2025-05-07: received
See all versions
Short URL
https://ia.cr/2025/812
License
Creative Commons Attribution
CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2025/812,
      author = {Nouri Alnahawi and Melissa Azouaoui and Joppe W. Bos and Gareth T. Davies and SeoJeong Moon and Christine van Vredendaal and Alexander Wiesmaier},
      title = {Post-Quantum Cryptography in {eMRTDs}: Evaluating {PAKE} and {PKI} for Travel Documents},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2025/812},
      year = {2025},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/812}
}
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