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Title: Google Quantum-Proofs HTTPS

Link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/02/28/0272...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google on Friday
unveiled its plan for its Chrome browser to secure HTTPS certificates against
quantum computer attacks without breaking the Internet. The objective is a
tall order. The quantum-resistant cryptographic data needed to transparently
publish TLS certificates is roughly 40 times bigger than the classical
cryptographic material used today. Today's X.509 certificates are about 64
bytes in size, and comprise six elliptic curve signatures and two EC public
keys. This material can be cracked through the quantum-enabled Shor's
algorithm. Certificates containing the equivalent quantum-resistant
cryptographic material are roughly 2.5 kilobytes. All this data must be
transmitted when a browser connects to a site. To bypass the bottleneck,
companies are turning to Merkle Trees, a data structure that uses
cryptographic hashes and other math to verify the contents of large amounts
of information using a small fraction of material used in more traditional
verification processes in public key infrastructure. Merkle Tree
Certificates, "replace the heavy, serialized chain of signatures found in
traditional PKI with compact Merkle Tree proofs," members of Google's Chrome
Secure Web and Networking Team wrote Friday. "In this model, a Certification
Authority (CA) signs a single 'Tree Head' representing potentially millions
of certificates, and the 'certificate' sent to the browser is merely a
lightweight proof of inclusion in that tree." [...] Google is [also] adding
cryptographic material from quantum-resistant algorithms such as ML-DSA
(PDF). This addition would allow forgeries only if an attacker were to break
both classical and post-quantum encryption. The new regime is part of what
Google is calling the quantum-resistant root store, which will complement the
Chrome Root Store the company formed in 2022. The [Merkle Tree Certificates]
MTCs use Merkle Trees to provide quantum-resistant assurances that a
certificate has been published without having to add most of the lengthy keys
and hashes. Using other techniques to reduce the data sizes, the MTCs will be
roughly the same 64-byte length they are now [...]. The new system has
already been implemented in Chrome.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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