NIST & KEM Combiners, Featuring SP800-227 and SP800-133 (C23b)
With the ongoing PQC migration, there is much interest in hybrid KEM combiners. Several schemes have been proposed, with the route to validation unclear. NIST recently published SP800-227 (Recommendations for KEMs) with guidelines for combiners, and an upcoming change to SP800-133 (Recommendation for Key Generation) will make it easier to validate some of the more commonly used KEM combiners, particularly in regards to deriving the seeds. This talk will discuss the portions of SP800-227 and SP800-133 relevant to KEM combiners and NIST’s perspective on how KEM combiners are expected to be validated.