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#Microsoft has updated a key cryptographic library with two new encryption algorithms designed to withstand attacks from quantum computers.
The library provides cryptographic security used in email security, cloud storage, web browsing, remote access, and device management. Microsoft documented the update in a post on Monday.
The ML in the ML-KEM name refers to Module Learning with Errors, a problem that can’t be cracked with Shor’s algorithm. As explained here
(PDF URL)
https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/472.pdf
this problem is based on a “core computational assumption of lattice-based cryptography which offers an interesting trade-off between guaranteed security and concrete efficiency.”
The updates were made last week to SymCrypt, a core cryptographic code library for handing cryptographic functions in Windows and Linux.
https://github.com/microsoft/SymCrypt
The first new algorithm Microsoft added to SymCrypt is called ML-KEM. Previously known as CRYSTALS-Kyber, ML-KEM is one of three post-quantum standards formalized last month by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2024/08/nist-releases-first-3-finalized-post-quantum-encryption-standards