NIST has published a status report on the final round of its lightweight cryptography standardization process, detailing the evaluation criteria and process used to select authenticated encryption and hashing schemes suitable for constrained environments. The report outlines the competition-like process involving NIST’s internal review of finalists and public feedback.
In February 2019, NIST received 57 candidate algorithms for consideration. After an initial review, 56 were accepted as first-round candidates in April 2019. Following further evaluation, 32 of these candidates advanced to the second round. NIST then selected 10 finalists in March 2021: ASCON, Elephant, GIFT-COFB, Grain-128AEAD, ISAP, PHOTON-Beetle, Romulus, SPARKLE, TinyJAMBU, and Xoodyak.
On February 7, 2023, NIST announced the decision to standardize the ASCON family for lightweight cryptography applications, marking the conclusion of the final round of the standardization process.
Keywords: Lightweight Cryptography, Standardization Process, NIST
