Ph.D. candidates Kim Young-beom (Department of Financial Information Security) and Shin Dong-hyun (Department of Cybersecurity), researchers affiliated with our university’s Cryptography and Security Engineering Laboratory (CSE, Advisor: Seo SeogChung) and the Ministry of Education-funded Glocal Lab Institute for Defense Technology Protection (Director: Professor Han Dong-Guk), each published papers on the implementation of post-quantum cryptography (PQC) in *The annual Conference on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems (CHES 2026, Issue 2), the most prestigious academic conference in the field of cryptographic implementation, and also published a paper in the Q1 journal IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II: Express Briefs.

This research stems from the recognition that, as quantum computers become practical and the security of existing public-key cryptosystems weakens, ultra-lightweight embedded devices operating at the network edge could become blind spots in the transition to post-quantum cryptography. In particular, while existing research on post-quantum cryptography has primarily focused on relatively high-performance platforms such as 32-bit and 64-bit ARM-based systems, the researchers noted that low-specification microcontrollers, such as 8-bit AVRs and 16-bit MSP430s, are still widely used in actual IoT and wireless sensor network environments. If these devices are excluded from the transition to quantum-resistant systems, sensitive data and commands could be exposed at the network perimeter, potentially compromising the security of the entire system. Consequently, the two studies emphasized the need to implement practical quantum security even on low-specification devices with limited memory and computational performance.

Under this research direction, “Optimized Implementations of Keccak, Kyber, and Dilithium on the MSP430 Microcontroller” presented an optimization methodology for efficiently implementing NIST-standard quantum-resistant cryptography on the low-specification 16-bit MSP430 platform. This study reflects the structural characteristics of 16-bit devices and proposes implementation techniques capable of efficiently computing PQC in environments with extremely limited resources. By achieving meaningful performance improvements, it demonstrated that PQC migration is feasible even on low-specification devices.

Furthermore, in “Lightweight PQ KEM and Hybrid MQTT Protocol for 8-bit AVR Sensor Nodes,” conducted in collaboration with Fudan University, a lightweight quantum-resistant KEM was designed to enable quantum-resistant secure communication even on ultra-low-spec devices. Furthermore, by demonstrating Hybrid KEM-MQTT in an actual 8-bit AVR environment, we showed that both pure PQC and hybrid approaches can be practically supported, and proved that quantum-secure protocols can be operated even on ultra-lightweight IoT sensor nodes.

Finally, in “A Hardware/Software Co-Optimization of HQC Using Tightly-Coupled Accelerators on a 32-bit Ibex Core,” a unified multiplier was designed to efficiently perform the core operations of HQC—a NIST-standard quantum-resistant cryptosystem—in a 32-bit RISC-V environment, which is a low-specification processor, and an instruction set extension was proposed for this purpose.

Based on this, the feasibility of high-speed HQC implementation was demonstrated even in low-specification 32-bit RISC-V environments.

Led by Professor Seo SeogChung, our university’s Cryptography and Security Engineering Laboratory (CSE) is actively conducting research focused on PQC optimization and security protocol migration in both software and hardware environments, and plans to continue expanding implementation and validation research for the practical application of post-quantum cryptography. Furthermore, as a researcher at the Ministry of Education-supported Glocal Lab’s Defense Technology Protection Research Institute, the team intends to contribute to securing global competitiveness in the fields of defense and weapons system security in collaboration with defense and aerospace companies.