Launch of the Linux Foundation's Post-Quantum Cryptography Alliance

February 6, 2024 at 09:00AM     Research

Today is the launch of the Post-Quantum Cryptography Alliance, a new open-source software foundation within the Linux Foundation. The PQCA will be the new home of the Open Quantum Safe project.

Michele Mosca and I founded the OQS project about a decade ago as a research project, to share code and enable experiments using post-quantum algorithms in applications like OpenSSL. People seemed interested in the code especially because it enabled experimental use of post-quantum in applications that relied on OpenSSL. The initiative was jump-started in 2016 with the NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization project, when suddenly there were lots of algorithms to evaluate. Since then interest in the project has grown and many people and organizations have helped build the project into a highly useful tool for prototyping, experimentation, and research. With the move into the Linux Foundation and the support of the PQCA, our goal is to have a permanent home for the OQS project and enable it to mature into a reliable open-source cryptography library that can support the transition to post-quantum cryptography, and also continue to enable research as PQ algorithms and capabilities evolve.

Many people and organizations have supported OQS over the years.

Current and past members of our core team: Norm Ashley, Michael Baentsch, Thomas Bailleux, Eric Crockett, Vlad Gheorghiu, Jason Goertzen, Basil Hess, Shravan Mishra, Michele Mosca, Christian Paquin, John Schanck, Pravek Sharma, Goutam Tamvada, Thom Wiggers, and Spencer Wilson.

Additional contributors, supporters, and champions: Mark Albert, Nicholas Allan, Matthew Campagna, Ben Davies, Nir Drucker, Ted Eaton, Karen Easterbrook, Linux Färnstrand, Jannis Fengler, Andrew Fregly, Shay Gueron, Torben Hansen, Alex Harrison, Brian Jarvis, Jeff Johnson, Burt Kaliski Jr., Kevin Kane, Matthias Kannwischer, Brian LaMacchia, Tancrède Lepoint, Yong Jian Ming, Keane Moraes, Dimitris Mouris, Brian Neill, Duc Tri Nguyen, PhD, Michael Osborne, Alex Parent, Geovandro Pereira, Sebastian Ramacher, Peter Schwabe, Dimitrios Sikeridis, John Underhill, Sebastian Verschoor, John F. Weston; see also the full list of contributors on GitHub.

Funding support for OQS has been provided by ARC, AWS, the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, Cisco, NSERC, the NGI Assure Fund, the Unitary Fund, VeriSign Inc., and the University of Waterloo.

Thanks to the team at the Linux Foundation (Hart Montgomery, Todd Benzies, Scott Nicholas, Michael Dolan) and others involved in the formation of the PQCA, including Michael Maximilien who pushed for the creation of the PQCA inside the Linux Foundation.