(External Master Thesis) With the emergence of quantum computing, cryptographic protocols like IPsec/IKEv2 must transition to post-quantum cryptographic (PQC) algorithms. This thesis focuses on integrating PQC into IPsec/IKEv2 for embedded systems, leveraging FPGA-based acceleration to optimize performance and resource usage.
Thesis includes evaluation of suitable PQC algorithms to create a hardware/software codesign concept, implementing critical cryptographic operations in FPGA hardware, and integrating them into an embedded software stack. The goal is to achieve a balanced co-design where FPGA handles computationally expensive tasks while maintaining flexibility in software.

NTRU is a well-known lattice-based cryptosystem that can be described using polynomial rings. The public-key encryption scheme NTRUEncrypt has the advantage of having short keys with fast encryption/decryption algorithms and is considered a viable candidate for post-quantum cryptography. There is also a signature scheme called NTRUSign, though its security is less trusted compared to NTRUEncrypt.

The task of the student is to understand and summarise how the two schemes work, the attacks against them in the literature and the countermeasures proposed to resist these attacks.

[1] J. Hoffstein, J. Pipher, and J. H. Silverman, ‘NTRU: A ring-based public key cryptosystem’. doi: 10.1007/BFb0054868.

[2] J. Hoffstein, N. Howgrave-Graham, J. Pipher, J. H. Silverman, and W. Whyte, ‘NTRUSign: Digital Signatures Using the NTRU Lattice’. doi: 10.1007/3-540-36563-X_9.

[3] J. Hoffstein, N. Howgrave-Graham, J. Pipher, and W. Whyte, ‘Practical Lattice-Based Cryptography: NTRUEncrypt and NTRUSign’. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-02295-1_11.

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