International Association
for Cryptologic Research

PERK is a digital signature scheme submitted to the recent NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization Process for Additional Digital Signature Schemes. For NIST security level I, PERK features sizes ranging from 6kB to 8.5kB, encompassing both the signature and public key, depending on the parameter set. Given its inherent characteristics, PERK's signing and verification algorithms involve the computation of numerous large objects, resulting in substantial stack-memory consumption ranging from 300kB to 1.5MB for NIST security level I and from 1.1MB to 5.7MB for NIST security level V. In this paper, we present a memory-versus-performance trade-off strategy that significantly reduces PERK's memory consumption to a maximum of approximately 82kB for any security level, enabling PERK to be executed on resource-constrained devices. Additionally, we explore various optimizations tailored to the Cortex M4 and introduce the first implementation of PERK designed for this platform.