Description
Embedded systems are flexible and diverse and thus have found
a use case in almost every part of our daily lives. They are cost-
effective and lightweight solutions for many applications and can
serve their intended purpose for years in a single lifecycle. Due to
their widespread use, they have also become valuable targets for
cyberattacks. However, translating high-end cybersecurity from
servers and desktops to the embedded realm can be challenging
due to the limited computational power and memory of embedded
devices. Although quantum computing is still in early research and
development, it threatens to break conventional asymmetric cryp-
tography which is the basis of most secure applications currently
in use. Given the long lifespan of embedded devices, which can
last for decades, research must find solutions for post-quantum
(PQ) security sooner rather than later. The field of post-quantum
cryptography (PQC) received significant attention in 2019 when the
National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) launched a
PQC competition to find suitable PQ algorithms. During the PQC
competition, the applicability of novel PQ algorithms to embedded
devices was an important topic that garnered significant research
interest. This article provides a survey of the latest research regard-
ing PQC application to embedded systems. However, rather than
focusing on PQ algorithms, it focuses on use cases intending to
help embedded developers understand the current state of research
from an integration standpoint. The article begins by presenting
the mathematical problems and algorithms leading the NIST com-
petition. It follows by discussing PQ secure network transmission,
authentic software execution, and secure updates. It aims to guide
developers and integrators in securing their applications with the
appropriate PQC solution.
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Thesis topic in co-operation with the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied and Integrated Security AISEC, Garching