Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) support

[karel-m]

This pull request introduces an initial proposal for Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) support

It adds support for the following NIST PQC standards:

• FIPS 203: Module-Lattice-Based Key Encapsulation Mechanism (ML-KEM)
• FIPS 204: Module-Lattice-Based Digital Signature Standard (ML-DSA)
• FIPS 205: Stateless Hash-Based Digital Signature Standard (SLH-DSA)

Further details on the standards can be found here: https://csrc.nist.gov/projects/post-quantum-cryptography#pqc-standards

The implementation is based on the official reference implementations (all of them public domain):

• https://github.com/pq-crystals/kyber (ML-KEM a.k.a. CRYSTALS-Kyber)
• https://github.com/pq-crystals/dilithium (ML-DSA a.k.a. CRYSTALS-Dilithium)
• https://github.com/sphincs/sphincsplus (SLH-DSA a.k.a. SPHINCS+)

I also considered adding support for NTRU Prime (as currently used for hybrid kex in OpenSSH 9), but it appears that the OpenSSH project is planning to move to ML-KEM in version 10. Therefore, I kept only the NIST PQC stuff.

A new public API has been introduced in: src/headers/tomcrypt_pqc.h The aim was to keep the interface simple/compact (unfortunately PQC itself is far from being simple/compact), while aligning with existing LTC design patterns.

At present, the test coverage is limited to basic functional checks:

• key generation + encapsulation + decapsulation (ML-KEM)
• key generation + signing + verification (ML-DSA, SLH-DSA)

MISSING: Official NIST test vectors still need to be identified (ACVP?) and added to the test suite.

MISSING: Interoperability with other crypto libraries was not tested at all.

MISSING: Functions for key import/export currently handle only raw data; sooner or later PKCS#8 (for privkeys) and/or SPKI/X.509 (for pubkeys) will be probably needed.

IMPORTANT: The code in this initial PR is very lightly tested and is not suitable for production use.

This change is intended as a first step towards PQC support and is open for discussion, review, and further improvements.

Checklist

• documentation is added or updated
• tests are added or updated

[karel-m]

As for key formats, there are some very recent standards:

• RFC 9935 (March 2026) defines ML-KEM in X.509/PKIX, including subject public keys and private keys.
• RFC 9909 (December 2025) defines SLH-DSA in X.509/PKIX, including public keys, signatures and private keys.
• RFC 9881 (October 2025) defines ML-DSA for X.509 certificates and CRLs, including subject public keys, signatures and private keys.

It looks doable with the infrastructure we have in LTC, but quite a lot of work. It may be worth creating a separate PR.

[VA1DER]

I don't know what OpenSSH's plan is for hybridizing any or all of these, but sntrup761x25519 was a very, very good idea in that it is provably at least as secure as both. There are still questions about the FIPS PQ algos' classic security. I would encourage dialog with the OpenSSH project to replicate this great idea. And with Jan Mojžíš of TinySSH who was, I understand, the driver behind that idea originally. Curve448 would be a great primitive to use for this, as it has some support already in several implementations (and in OpenSSL).

Secondly, does your implementation include the 256-bit (classic-strength) versions of these? ML-KEM-1024 & ML-DSA-87?

[karel-m]

We support all parameter sets defined in NIST FIPS 203:

• ML-KEM-512 = LTC_MLKEM_512
• ML-KEM-768 = LTC_MLKEM_768
• ML-KEM-1024 = LTC_MLKEM_1024

We also support all parameter sets defined in NIST FIPS 204:

• ML-DSA-44 = LTC_MLDSA_44
• ML-DSA-65 = LTC_MLDSA_65
• ML-DSA-87 = LTC_MLDSA_87

And all from NIST FIPS 205:

• SLH-DSA-SHAKE-128s = LTC_SLHDSA_SHAKE_128S
• SLH-DSA-SHAKE-128f = LTC_SLHDSA_SHAKE_128F
• SLH-DSA-SHAKE-192s = LTC_SLHDSA_SHAKE_192S
• SLH-DSA-SHAKE-192f = LTC_SLHDSA_SHAKE_192F
• SLH-DSA-SHAKE-256s = LTC_SLHDSA_SHAKE_256S
• SLH-DSA-SHAKE-256f = LTC_SLHDSA_SHAKE_256F
• SLH-DSA-SHA2-128s = LTC_SLHDSA_SHA2_128S
• SLH-DSA-SHA2-128f = LTC_SLHDSA_SHA2_128F
• SLH-DSA-SHA2-192s = LTC_SLHDSA_SHA2_192S
• SLH-DSA-SHA2-192f = LTC_SLHDSA_SHA2_192F
• SLH-DSA-SHA2-256s = LTC_SLHDSA_SHA2_256S
• SLH-DSA-SHA2-256f = LTC_SLHDSA_SHA2_256F

So yes, this includes the higher-security parameter sets such as ML-KEM-1024 and ML-DSA-87.

As for OpenSSh see https://www.openssh.org/releasenotes.html it looks as they already switched the default to mlkem768x25519-sha256 in OpenSSH 9.9.

On adding further algorithms such as NTRU Prime 761, our preference is to follow widely adopted standards. NIST remains a credible standards body (even if some people see it negatively for geopolitical reasons). In the past, we added a few algorithms that were close to becoming standards but never quite got there and that usually created extra maintenance work.

[karel-m]

Update:

• Added import/export functions (in the end, not that complicated) + RFC 9935, RFC 9909, RFC 9881
• Generated a bunch of PQC keys using OpenSSL 4.0, all of which we are able to import
• Extracted some PQC test vectors from OpenSSL 4.0

However, we are now getting some segfaults in the GitLab tests (edit: fixed)