NIST Announces First Four Quantum-Resistant Cryptographic Algorithms

jd writes: NIST has announced winners of its post-quantum cryptography battle of the giants.

CRYSTALS-Kyber has been chosen for standard encryption, CRYSTALS-Dilithium, Falcon, and SPHINCS+ were chosen for digital signatures. Falcon is recommended by NIST as a backup for Dilithium where shorter keys are needed, and SPHINCS+ uses a different mathematical technique than all of the other submissions, so if it is found that there's a flaw in the maths for the others, then there's something to fall back on.

There is still a final round for public key encryption algorithms. The remaining candidates are BIKE, Classic McEliece, HQC, and SIKE.

The mailing list members probably wish that they could use Slashdot's moderation system about now, as some of the discussions have been extremely heated. This was especially true for the signature system Rainbow, which is used by the ABC Mint crypto-currency, which was rejected after what was claimed to be a catastrophic flaw was reported, with allegations that it could be broken over a weekend on a laptop, followed by counter-allegations that many of the other algorithms had significant flaws in them also. (This is likely why SPHINCS+ is a backup.)

Another area that was hotly debated was CPU design flaws, particularly HertzBleed, which got the well-known crypto maestro Bernstein rather annoyed. As SIKE is a final round candidate, NIST seem to be satisfied with his explanation for why CPU design flaws should not be considered. It is to be seen how this debate progresses.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

nmap -sV --script vuln -p- <target-network>

tail -f /var/log/suricata/fast.log | grep <cve>

Check Vendor Security Advisory Bulletin

title: Detect Exploitation - NIST Announces First Four Quantum-Resistant Cryptographic Algorithms
id: 1c660f11-fe7f-4dff-82d0-3ea68a2f59c2
status: experimental
description: Automatisch generierte SIEM-Erkennungsregel basierend auf CTI Intelligence
references:
  - https://tsecurity.de/
author: iShareStuff CTI Automated Detection Engine
date: 2026-09-25
logsource:
  category: network_connection
  product: any
detection:
  selection:
      CommandLine|contains:
        - 'exploit'
  condition: selection
falsepositives:
  - Legitime administrative Zugriffe oder Penetrationstests
level: high
tags:
  - attack.initial_access

rule CTI_Threat_Indicator {
    meta:
        author = "iShareStuff CTI Automated Detection Engine"
        date = "2026-09-25"
        description = "YARA Signature for "
    strings:
        $str = "NIST Announces First Four Quan" ascii wide
    condition:
        any of them
}

index=security sourcetype IN ("cisco:asa", "pan:traffic", "zeek_conn", "suricata", "WinEventLog:Security")
("NIST Announces First Four Quantum-Resist")
| stats count earliest(_time) as first_seen latest(_time) as last_seen by src_ip, dest_ip, dest_host, signature
| eval first_seen=strftime(first_seen, "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"), last_seen=strftime(last_seen, "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
| sort - count

message: "*NIST Announces First Four Quantum-Resist*"

CommonSecurityLog
| where Message has "NIST Announces First Four Quantum-Resist"
| summarize EventCount = count(), FirstSeen = min(TimeGenerated), LastSeen = max(TimeGenerated) by SourceIP, DestinationIP, DestinationPort, Activity
| extend DetectionRule = "iShareStuff-CTI-Compiled"
| sort by EventCount desc