On Certifying Post-Quantum Implementations at “High” Assurance Level (A20c)
Cryptography certified at the EUCC “high” assurance level must meet vulnerability analysis (AVA_VAN) level 3 or higher. AVA_VAN introduces resistance to Side-Channel Attacks (SCA) and Fault Injection Attacks (FIA) as part of the evaluation scope. Based on the latest research findings on hardware cryptography modules, the speaker discusses what this means for high-assurance implementers working with standard PQC algorithms such as ML-KEM/Kyber, ML-DSA/Dilithium, SLH-DSA/SPHINCS+, FrodoKEM, and McEliece. Notably, some required countermeasures cannot simply be patched into existing implementations and instead demand substantial re-engineering. The findings are also relevant for licensing and integrating PQC modules.