Merge pull request #94 from trustoverip/post-quantum

adds post quantum

Author: pfeairheller

spec/spec.md

@@ -1915,6 +1915,11 @@ It is important to note that if this Version of the credential is the one issued
 
 With this approach, credential presentation request and exchange protocols can be created that modify the schema with the conditional subschema, removing the conditions that allow for SAIDs in place of the required (or presented) nested blocks.  The modified schema can be used in such a protocol to indicate the required sections to be delivered out of bounds or as a commitment to provide the nested blocks after the credential presentation has occurred.
 
+### Post-Quantum Security
+Post-quantum or quantum-safe cryptography deals with techniques that maintain their cryptographic strength despite attacks from quantum computers. Because it is currently assumed that practical quantum computers do not yet exist, post-quantum techniques are forward-looking to some future time when they do exist. A one-way function that is post-quantum secure will not be any less secure (resistant to inversion) in the event that practical quantum computers suddenly or unexpectedly become available. One class of post-quantum secure one-way functions are some cryptographic strength hashes. The analysis of D.J. Bernstein with regards the collision resistance of cryptographic one-way hashing functions concludes that quantum computation provides no advantage over non-quantum techniques. Consequently, one way to provide some degree of post-quantum security is to hide cryptographic material behind digests of that material created by such hashing functions. This directly applies to the public keys declared in the pre-rotations. Instead of a pre-rotation making a cryptographic pre-commitment to a public key, it makes a pre-commitment to a digest of that public key. The digest may be verified once the public key is disclosed (unhidden) in a later rotation operation. Because the digest is the output of a one-way hash function, the digest is uniquely strongly bound to the public key. When the unexposed public keys of a pre-rotation are hidden in a digest, the associated private keys are protected from a post-quantum brute force inversion attack on those public keys.
+
+To elaborate, a post-quantum attack that may practically invert the one-way public key generation (ECC scalar multiplication) function using quantum computation must first invert the digest of the public key using non-quantum computation. Pre-quantum cryptographic strength is, therefore, not weakened post-quantum. A surprise quantum capability may no longer be a vulnerability. Strong one-way hash functions, such as 256-bit (32-byte) Blake2, Blake3, and SHA3, with 128-bits of pre-quantum strength, maintain that strength post-quantum. Furthermore, hiding the pre-rotation public keys does not impose any additional storage burden on the controller because the controller must always be able to reproduce or recover the associated private keys to sign the associated rotation operation. Hidden public keys may be compactly expressed as Base64 encoded qualified public keys digests (hidden) where the digest function is indicated in the derivation code.
+
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