In Cybersecurity, from Luxembourgian Sponges to Towns, it is Time to SPARKLE!

Here’s a quick question … do you know the Luxembourgish for sponges? Also, where in the world would you find a place called Esch? Well, you might do soon, especially if a SPARKLE-derived method wins the NIST competition for lightweight cryptography.

NIST has previously defined two classic standards: AES and SHA-3, and they have reached the final stage for the assessment of two more key standards: quantum robust cryptography and light-weight cryptography. The results of these are likely to be announced within the next 12 months. For light-weight cryptography, we are down to the last 10, and Sparkle is one of the contenders.

Overall, Sparkle is a family of permutations and Christof Beierle, Alex Biryukov, Luan Cardoso dos Santos, Johann Großschädl, Léo Perrin, Aleksei Udovenko, Vesselin Velichkov, and Qingju Wang. Christof, Alex, Luan , Johann G, Aleksei, and Qingju are from the University of Luxembourgh, L´eo from Inria, Paris, and Vesselin from the University of Edinburgh [here]:

The submitted version for the NIST competition includes Schwaemm [1] which is a lightweight cryptography method and…