PQC Cryptographic Operations - crt26/pqc-evaluation-tools GitHub Wiki

Description of Post-Quantum Cryptographic Operations

Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) algorithms are separated into two categories: Digital Signature Schemes and Key Encapsulation Mechanisms (KEMs). Each category has three cryptographic operations defining the algorithm’s core functionality.

This page provides a brief overview of these operations to support the performance metrics descriptions detailed later in the subsequent performance metric guide pages.

Digital Signature Operations

Operation Name	Internal Label	Description
Key Generation	keypair	Generates a public/private key pair for the digital signature algorithm.
Signing	sign	Uses the private key to generate a digital signature over a message.
Verification	Verify	Uses the public key to verify the authenticity of a digital signature.

Key Encapsulation Mechanism (KEM) Operations

Operation Name	Internal Label	Description
Key Generation	keygen	Generates a public/private key pair for the KEM algorithm.
Encapsulation	encaps	Uses the public key to generate a shared secret and ciphertext.
Decapsulation	decaps	Uses the private key to recover the shared secret from the ciphertext.