About PQC Visualization

Abstract

The emergence of quantum computing presents an unprecedented threat to current cryptographic systems. With sufficient quantum computing capabilities, Shor's algorithm will efficiently break widely used public-key cryptography like Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) and Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC). To counter this threat, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has standardized three quantum-resistant algorithms in their Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS): Module-Lattice-based Key Encapsulation Mechanism (ML-KEM) for key encapsulation, Module-Lattice-based Digital Signature Algorithm (ML-DSA) for digital signatures, and Stateless Hash-based Digital Signature Algorithm (SLH-DSA) for hash-based signatures. This paper presents 'pqc', a JavaScript implementation of these standards available as a Node Package Manager (npm) package. Our implementation achieves practical performance on modern hardware, with ML-KEM-768 performing 2,305 operations per second for key generation and ML-DSA65 achieving 386 operations per second for signing operations. The library enables developers to integrate post-quantum cryptography into web applications, helping prepare current systems for the quantum computing era.