PQC-LEO: An Evaluation Framework for Post-Quantum Cryptographic Algorithms
This framework addresses the challenge of evaluating PQC algorithm performance for researchers and practitioners needing to adopt these new cryptographic standards.
This paper introduces PQC-LEO, a benchmarking framework for evaluating the computational and networking performance of Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) algorithms on x86 and ARM architectures. A proof-of-concept evaluation demonstrated that PQC methods with higher security levels experience a greater performance reduction on ARM architectures compared to x86.
Advances in quantum computing threaten digital communication security by undermining the foundations of current public-key cryptography through Shor's quantum algorithm. This has driven the development of Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC), a new set of algorithms resistant to quantum attacks. While NIST has standardised several PQC schemes, challenges remain in their adoption. This paper introduces the PQC-LEO framework, a benchmarking suite designed to automate the evaluation of PQC computational and networking performance across x86 and ARM architectures. A proof-of-concept evaluation was conducted to demonstrate the framework's capabilities and highlight its application in supporting ongoing research on the adoption of PQC algorithms. The results show that there is a greater performance reduction in implementing PQC methods with higher security on ARM architectures than on the x86 architecture.