The State of the Art in Stateful Hash-Based Signatures (Q22b)
The recent release of CNSA 2.0, and its encouragement for vendors to begin adopting stateful hash-based signatures (HBS) immediately for FW/SW signing applications has renewed interest in a technology that had largely been ignored until now. We’d like to shed some light on stateful HBS, describing the different variants and the intricacies associated with managing their state. We will then take a look at NIST’s SP800-208 standard, some of the implications it has on the adoption of stateful HBS in real world scenarios, and some potential solutions that might help ease their adoption in the aggressive timelines being suggested by CNSA 2.0.