NIST announced that the PQC standardization process is continuing with a fourth round, with the following KEMs still under consideration: BIKE, Classic McEliece, HQC, and SIKE. However, there are no remaining digital signature candidates under consideration. As such, NIST posted a call for additional digital signature proposals to be considered in the PQC standardization process. The call for submissions closed June 1, 2023.
On July 17, 2023, NIST announced additional Digital Signature candidates for the PQC standardization process.
Background
NIST initiated a public process to select quantum-resistant public-key cryptographic algorithms for standardization in response to the substantial development and advancement of quantum computing. NIST issued the public call for submissions to the PQC Standardization Process in December 2016 and, after three rounds of evaluation and analysis, announced the selection of the first algorithms to be standardized. The public-key encapsulation mechanism (KEM) that will be standardized is CRYSTALS-KYBER. The digital signatures that will be standardized are CRYSTALS-Dilithium, FALCON, and SPHINCS+. Except for SPHINCS+, all these schemes are based on the computational hardness of problems involving structured lattices.
