Integração do algoritmo pós-quântico MAYO no protocolo ACME

Abstract

The rapid evolution of quantum computers poses a concrete threat to traditional cryptographic systems, making cybersecurity more important than ever. To address these emerging risks, postquantumalgorithms have beendevelopedtowithstand attacks enabled by quantumcomputation. In the standardization process led by NIST, Crystals-Kyber was selected for public-key encryption, while Crystals-Dilithium, Falcon, and Sphincs+ were chosen as digital signature schemes. A new initiative, known as the on-ramp process, now aims to incorporate algorithms based on cryptographic families not yet covered by the current standards. Within this context, the MAYO algorithm has gained attention for offering public-key and signature sizes comparable to—or even smaller than—those of the selected schemes. This work investigates the internal mechanisms of the MAYO algorithm and the ACME protocol, integrating MAYO into ACME both in isolation and in hybrid mode with classical algorithms. To support this integration, we rely on a modified version of the protocol previously adapted for hybrid and post-quantum algorithms. We conduct comparative performance tests between MAYO and Dilithium to assess the impact of this integration on the certificate issuance process. The results demonstrated that MAYO proved to be competitive compared to Dilithium, exhibiting equivalent temporal performance in WAN network simulations, but with a significant advantage in certificate size reduction.