Hardware Design of SHA-3 for PQC Classic McEliece

Abstract

As the computing power of quantum computers continues to improve, the security of the mathematical problems on current-used cryptographic algorithm are facing more and more serious challenge. It is necessary to formulate the standard of post-quantum cryptographic algorithm. Classic McEliece is one of the 7 candidates entering the Round 3 of NIST PQC contest. In the decryption module of Classic McEliece, H module uses the SHA-3 algorithm. As a new generation of hash algorithm, SHA-3 algorithm uses the Keccak sponge function, which has the advantages of higher speed, higher throughput and stronger security. Keccak truly realizes the processing of input information of any length, and can also generate hash values of any length. In the future, SHA-3 will be applied to more fields, so the high-performance and flexible implementation of the SHA-3 is especially important. This paper analyzed the four SHA-3 algorithms, and integrated the four algorithm standards into one implementation for Classic McEliece. The Xilinx Zynq-7000 series FPGA is chosen as the implementation and verification platform, and the performance are compared with the algorithm implementation of Keccak official team.