@noble/post-quantum v0.4.1

noble-post-quantum

Auditable & minimal JS implementation of post-quantum public-key cryptography.

• 🔒 Auditable
• 🔻 Tree-shakeable: unused code is excluded from your builds
• 🔍 Reliable: tests ensure correctness
• 🦾 ML-KEM & CRYSTALS-Kyber: lattice-based kem from FIPS-203
• 🔋 ML-DSA & CRYSTALS-Dilithium: lattice-based signatures from FIPS-204
• 🐈 SLH-DSA & SPHINCS+: hash-based Winternitz signatures from FIPS-205
• 🪶 37KB (15KB gzipped) for everything with bundled hashes

Take a glance at GitHub Discussions for questions and support.

!IMPORTANT NIST published IR 8547, prohibiting classical cryptography (RSA, DSA, ECDSA, ECDH) after 2035. Australian ASD does same thing after 2030. Take it into an account while designing a new cryptographic system.

This library belongs to noble cryptography

noble cryptography — high-security, easily auditable set of contained cryptographic libraries and tools.

• Zero or minimal dependencies
• Highly readable TypeScript / JS code
• PGP-signed releases and transparent NPM builds
• All libraries: ciphers, curves, hashes, post-quantum, 4kb secp256k1 / ed25519
• Check out homepage for reading resources, documentation and apps built with noble

Usage

npm install @noble/post-quantum

deno add jsr:@noble/post-quantum

deno doc jsr:@noble/post-quantum # command-line documentation

We support all major platforms and runtimes. For React Native, you may need a polyfill for getRandomValues. A standalone file noble-post-quantum.js is also available.

// import * from '@noble/post-quantum'; // Error: use sub-imports instead
import { ml_kem512, ml_kem768, ml_kem1024 } from '@noble/post-quantum/ml-kem';
import { ml_dsa44, ml_dsa65, ml_dsa87 } from '@noble/post-quantum/ml-dsa';
import {
  slh_dsa_sha2_128f,
  slh_dsa_sha2_128s,
  slh_dsa_sha2_192f,
  slh_dsa_sha2_192s,
  slh_dsa_sha2_256f,
  slh_dsa_sha2_256s,
  slh_dsa_shake_128f,
  slh_dsa_shake_128s,
  slh_dsa_shake_192f,
  slh_dsa_shake_192s,
  slh_dsa_shake_256f,
  slh_dsa_shake_256s,
} from '@noble/post-quantum/slh-dsa';

• ML-KEM / Kyber
• ML-DSA / Dilithium
• SLH-DSA / SPHINCS+
• What should I use?
• Security
• Speed
• Contributing & testing
• License

ML-KEM / Kyber shared secrets

import { ml_kem512, ml_kem768, ml_kem1024 } from '@noble/post-quantum/ml-kem';
import { randomBytes } from '@noble/post-quantum/utils';

// 1. [Alice] generates secret & public keys, then sends publicKey to Bob
const seed = randomBytes(64); // seed is optional
const aliceKeys = ml_kem768.keygen(seed);

// 2. [Bob] generates shared secret for Alice publicKey
// bobShared never leaves [Bob] system and is unknown to other parties
const { cipherText, sharedSecret: bobShared } = ml_kem768.encapsulate(aliceKeys.publicKey);

// 3. [Alice] gets and decrypts cipherText from Bob
const aliceShared = ml_kem768.decapsulate(cipherText, aliceKeys.secretKey);

// Now, both Alice and Bob have same sharedSecret key
// without exchanging in plainText: aliceShared == bobShared

// Warning: Can be MITM-ed
const carolKeys = kyber1024.keygen();
const carolShared = kyber1024.decapsulate(cipherText, carolKeys.secretKey); // No error!
notDeepStrictEqual(aliceShared, carolShared); // Different key!

Lattice-based key encapsulation mechanism, defined in FIPS-203.

See website and repo. There are some concerns with regards to security: see djb blog and mailing list. Old, incompatible version (Kyber) is not provided. Open an issue if you need it.

!WARNING Unlike ECDH, KEM doesn't verify whether it was "Bob" who've sent the ciphertext. Instead of throwing an error when the ciphertext is encrypted by a different pubkey, decapsulate will simply return a different shared secret. ML-KEM is also probabilistic and relies on quality of CSPRNG.

ML-DSA / Dilithium signatures

import { ml_dsa44, ml_dsa65, ml_dsa87 } from '@noble/post-quantum/ml-dsa';
import { utf8ToBytes, randomBytes } from '@noble/post-quantum/utils';
const seed = randomBytes(32); // seed is optional
const keys = ml_dsa65.keygen(seed);
const msg = utf8ToBytes('hello noble');
const sig = ml_dsa65.sign(keys.secretKey, msg);
const isValid = ml_dsa65.verify(keys.publicKey, msg, sig);

Lattice-based digital signature algorithm, defined in FIPS-204. See website and repo. The internals are similar to ML-KEM, but keys and params are different.

SLH-DSA / SPHINCS+ signatures

import {
  slh_dsa_sha2_128f,
  slh_dsa_sha2_128s,
  slh_dsa_sha2_192f,
  slh_dsa_sha2_192s,
  slh_dsa_sha2_256f,
  slh_dsa_sha2_256s,
  slh_dsa_shake_128f,
  slh_dsa_shake_128s,
  slh_dsa_shake_192f,
  slh_dsa_shake_192s,
  slh_dsa_shake_256f,
  slh_dsa_shake_256s,
} from '@noble/post-quantum/slh-dsa';
import { utf8ToBytes } from '@noble/post-quantum/utils';

const keys2 = sph.keygen();
const msg2 = utf8ToBytes('hello noble');
const sig2 = sph.sign(keys2.secretKey, msg2);
const isValid2 = sph.verify(keys2.publicKey, msg2, sig2);

Hash-based digital signature algorithm, defined in FIPS-205. See website and repo. We implement spec v3.1 with FIPS adjustments.

There are many different kinds, but basically sha2 / shake indicate internal hash, 128 / 192 / 256 indicate security level, and s /f indicate trade-off (Small / Fast). SLH-DSA is slow: see benchmarks for key size & speed.

What should I use?

We suggest to use ECC + ML-KEM for key agreement, ECC + SLH-DSA for signatures.

ML-KEM and ML-DSA are lattice-based. SLH-DSA is hash-based, which means it is built on top of older, more conservative primitives. NIST guidance for security levels:

• Category 3 (~AES-192): ML-KEM-768, ML-DSA-65, SLH-DSA-SHA2/shake-192s/f
• Category 5 (~AES-256): ML-KEM-1024, ML-DSA-87, SLH-DSA-SHA2/shake-256s/f

NIST recommends to use cat-3+, while australian ASD only allows cat-5 after 2030.

For hashes, use SHA512 or SHA3-512 (not SHA256); and for ciphers ensure AES-256 or ChaCha.

Security

The library has not been independently audited yet.

If you see anything unusual: investigate and report.

Constant-timeness

There is no protection against side-channel attacks. We actively research how to provide this property for post-quantum algorithms in JS. Keep in mind that even hardware versions ML-KEM are vulnerable.

Supply chain security

• Commits are signed with PGP keys, to prevent forgery. Make sure to verify commit signatures
• Releases are transparent and built on GitHub CI. Make sure to verify provenance logs
  • Use GitHub CLI to verify single-file builds: gh attestation verify --owner paulmillr noble-post-quantum.js
• Rare releasing is followed to ensure less re-audit need for end-users
• Dependencies are minimized and locked-down: any dependency could get hacked and users will be downloading malware with every install.
  • We make sure to use as few dependencies as possible
  • Automatic dep updates are prevented by locking-down version ranges; diffs are checked with npm-diff
• Dev Dependencies are disabled for end-users; they are only used to develop / build the source code

For this package, there is 1 dependency; and a few dev dependencies:

• noble-hashes provides cryptographic hashing functionality
• micro-bmark, micro-should and jsbt are used for benchmarking / testing / build tooling and developed by the same author
• prettier, fast-check and typescript are used for code quality / test generation / ts compilation. It's hard to audit their source code thoroughly and fully because of their size

Randomness

We're deferring to built-in crypto.getRandomValues which is considered cryptographically secure (CSPRNG).

In the past, browsers had bugs that made it weak: it may happen again. Implementing a userspace CSPRNG to get resilient to the weakness is even worse: there is no reliable userspace source of quality entropy.

Speed

Noble is the fastest JS implementation of post-quantum algorithms. WASM libraries can be faster. For SLH-DSA, SHAKE slows everything down 8x, and -s versions do another 20-50x slowdown.

Benchmarks on Apple M4:

# ML-KEM768
keygen x 3,778 ops/sec @ 264μs/op
encapsulate x 3,220 ops/sec @ 310μs/op
decapsulate x 4,029 ops/sec @ 248μs/op
# ML-DSA65
keygen x 580 ops/sec @ 1ms/op
sign x 272 ops/sec @ 3ms/op
verify x 546 ops/sec @ 1ms/op
# SLH-DSA SHA2 192f
keygen x 245 ops/sec @ 4ms/op
sign x 8 ops/sec @ 114ms/op
verify x 169 ops/sec @ 5ms/op

SLH-DSA (_shake is 8x slower):

Contributing & testing

• npm install && npm run build && npm test will build the code and run tests.
• npm run lint / npm run format will run linter / fix linter issues.
• npm run bench will run benchmarks, which may need their deps first (npm run bench:install)
• npm run build:release will build single file

Check out github.com/paulmillr/guidelines for general coding practices and rules.

See paulmillr.com/noble for useful resources, articles, documentation and demos related to the library.

License

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2024 Paul Miller (https://paulmillr.com)

See LICENSE file.