NIST released the draft standard for ML-KEM, and we can expect its widespread use in the embedded world in the near future. Several side-channel attacks have been proposed, and one line of research has focused on attacks against the comparison step of the FO-transform. A work published at TCHES 2022 stressed the need for secure higher-order masked comparisons beyond the t-probing model and proposed a higher-order masked comparison method. Subsequently, D'Anvers, Van Beirendonck, and Verbauwhede improved upon the performance of several previous proposals; their higher-order masked algorithm currently achieves the highest performance for masked comparisons.

In this paper we present PQ-WireGuard, a post-quantum variant of the handshake in the WireGuard VPN protocol (NDSS 2017). Unlike most previous work on post-quantum security for real-world protocols, this variant does not only consider post-quantum confidentiality (or forward secrecy) but also post-quantum authentication. To achieve this, we replace the Diffie-Hellman-based handshake by a more generic approach only using key-encapsulation mechanisms (KEMs). We establish security of PQ-WireGuard, adapting the security proofs for WireGuard in the symbolic model and in the standard model to our construction. We then instantiate this generic construction with concrete post-quantum secure KEMs, which we carefully select to achieve high security and speed. We demonstrate competitiveness of PQ-WireGuard presenting extensive bench-marking results comparing to widely deployed VPN solutions.

The vast majority of Internet users are relying on centralized search engine providers to conduct their web searches. However, search results can be censored and search queries can be recorded by these providers without the user's knowledge. Distributed web search engines based on peer-to-peer networks have been proposed to mitigate these threats. In this paper we analyze the three most popular real-world distributed web search engines: Faroo, Seeks and Yacy, with respect to their censorship resistance and privacy protection. We show that none of them provides an adequate level of protection against an adversary with modest resources. Recognizing these flaws, we identify security properties a censorship-resistant and privacy-preserving distributed web search engine should provide. We propose two novel defense mechanisms called node density protocol and webpage verification protocol to achieve censorship resistance and show their effectiveness and feasibility with simulations. Finally, we elaborate on how state-of-the-art defense mechanisms achieve privacy protection in distributed web search engines.