World’s first open-source cryptographic hardness estimation library launched by technology innovation institute

The Technology Innovation Institute (TII) in Abu Dhabi has introduced CryptographicEstimators, the world's first open-source software library tailored for Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) security evaluations. This tool addresses the inconsistencies in current cryptographic estimation methods, offering a standardized approach for key exchange, encryption, and signatures. Covering a wide range of post-quantum secure foundations, the library also allows for the integration of various cryptographic assumptions. The initiative aligns with global standardization efforts and underscores the UAE's commitment to cryptographic research and innovation.

Press Release

The Technology Innovation Institute (TII), a leading global scientific research center and the applied research pillar of Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC), today announced that its Cryptography Research Center (CRC) has launched CryptographicEstimators, the world’s first open-source software library entirely dedicated to estimating the security of Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) schemes, including key exchange methods, public key encryption and signatures.

Today, cryptographic estimations are often performed in an ad-hoc manner, producing non-standardized estimation scripts that deliver varying outcomes for the same problems. This method posts an obstacle to reaching a consensus around the hardness of cryptographic problems.

As TII’s latest contribution to cryptographic research and standardization, CryptographicEstimators addresses the need for a reliable point of access for concrete security estimates by consolidating existing estimators and providing the foundation for newly designed ones. This approach helps public key scheme designers select secure parameters and it supports cryptanalysts in assessing their findings against established benchmarks.

Moreover, unlike similar projects that only evaluate single classes of hardness assumptions, such as lattice-based assumptions, CryptographicEstimators aims at the full spectrum of post-quantum secure foundations, currently including multivariate and code-based problems, along with some of their variants. The library can also be easily extended by researchers to accommodate various other types of cryptographic assumptions.

Commenting on this milestone, Dr. Najwa Aaraj, Chief Researcher, CRC, said, “The introduction of the CryptographicEstimators library is particularly important in this critical moment, where we see ongoing efforts of the American National Institute of Standard and Technologies (NIST) in standardizing PQC. CryptographicEstimators, a unique, state-of-the-art cryptographic tool, positions TII as a prime mover in the PQC domain and solidifies the UAE’s role as an important stakeholder in advancing the PQC ecosystem.”

CryptographicEstimators complements TII’s other initiatives in the cryptography sphere, such as the TII-McEliece Challenges, the new digital signatures submitted to NIST, and the creation of the first PQC software library in the UAE, on top of ongoing research on PQC.