International Association
for Cryptologic Research

Hybrid post-quantum cryptography is a cautious approach that aims to guard against the threat posed by the quantum computer, through the simultaneous use of Post- Quantum (PQ) and classical (i.e. pre-quantum) cryptosystems, in case the post-quantum schemes used would turn out to be insecure.

Regarding the hybridization of Key Encapsulation Mechanisms (KEMs), most recent studies focus on how to safely combine the symmetric keys output by a parallel execution of classical and post-quantum KEMs. As simple as this architecture is, it however appears not to be the most efficient, computationally speaking as well as regarding the bandwidth of the exchanges.

Hence, we propose a new method to hybridize several KEMs more effectively, by combining the underlying Public Key Encryption schemes (PKEs) in an innovative variant of the cas- cade composition that we call "leaking-cascade". We prove that this architecture constitutes an IND-CPA-secure robust combiner for the encryption schemes, which permits to create an IND-CCA2 KEM upon the generated hybrid PKE. The leaking-cascade is at least as computationally effective as the commonly used parallel combination, and has a bandwidth gain - when it comes to the ciphertext produced - that may exceed 13 % compared to the latter.