Fursan Thabit

HWAX: Metric-Hardness-Based Lightweight Block Cipher for Postquantum IoT Security on 32-bit Microcontrollers

Every lightweight cipher standardized to date uses a 128-bit key, which Grover’s algorithm reduces to 64-bit postquantum security—below the NIST postquantum threshold. We present <bold>HWAX</bold>, a 128-bit block cipher with a 256-bit key designed for the ARM Cortex-M4 pipeline. HWAX combines three table-free layers:...