Hybrid PQC Digital Signatures and SSI

Self-sovereign identity (SSI) and digital credentials are becoming more and more practical, especially in Europe, and as such it is essential for them to be secured against the quantum threat. As we know PQC is a relatively modern area of cryptography and so we have decided to implement both a classical and a PQC digital signature scheme in a hybrid implementation within an SSI stack. Therefore, providing the classical security we know and trust while also preparing for the eventual quantum computing attack in the future. We are developing a hybrid PQC digital signature scheme in which we are implementing ML-DSA and ECDSA in parallel. The goals of our project also include the benchmarking and comparison of the hybrid vs PQC vs classical implementations. - *Erik Hieta-aho* - Senior Scientist at VTT, Research Center of Finland