XMSS VS. SPHINCS+: comparação entre dois esquemas de assinaturas digitais pós-quânticos.

Abstract

With the advancement of technology, each day more inserted in our daily life, the need arose to use more sustainable techniques, such as the substitution of physical paper documents for electronic documents. However, it is necessary that the security of the data in such documents is ensured. One of the ways to obtain such security is through digital signature. A digital signature scheme is an indispensable technology for providing specific essential characteristics to electronic data, such as: authenticity, integrity, and non-retractability. Many applications in various areas use digital signatures to secure their data, such as user authentication, eCommerce, software key distribution, and more. However, with the emergence of quantum computers, most of today’s most widely used digital signature schemes would no longer be secure because their security depends on the difficulty of factoring large integers and calculating discrete logarithms. This requires the usage of signature schemes that are resistant to quantum computers; Hash-based digital signature schemes are considered resistant to quantum computers. This paper makes a study of digital signature schemes based on hash functions, one already standardized, XMSS, and presents a comparison with a new algorithm candidate for standardization, SPHINCS+.