2025-09-04 Meeting Notes

Crypto SIG charter that was approved last meeting has been proposed and discussed in TSC by @Markku-Juhani Saarinen. It is expected to be approved within two weeks.

NIST is promising FALCON will be standardized soon. Until it is released it is unclear what has changed. E.g. not clear if fixed-point arithmetic is still an option. Floating-point instructions need consideration for constant time operations. Specifically the sampler due to its handling of secret bits. Most floating-point operations could be made constant time, except for divide and square root. Well-formed inputs and outputs could be managed, as input output are integer.

A RISC-V webinar on a HQC accelerator has been announced: https://community.riscv.org/events/details/risc-v-international-risc-v-synergy-forums-technical-talks-and-webinars-presents-risc-v-technical-session-tyrca-a-risc-v-tightly-coupled-accelerator-for-code-based-cryptography/

Monday TG meeting had a smaller audience, picking up activities after the summer period. The group continued discussing variable size keys and the need for a plan with target dates. There’s an initial spec document on github to be reviewed to identify topics to further discuss and elaborate.

@Markku-Juhani Saarinen explained some CRA and related CENELEC standardization work. He can present on this next week.