Re:Keeping the Internet fast and secure: introducing Merkle ...
by sunsetonsaturn on Wednesday October 29, 2025 @08:10AM
(#45745751)
> 10 years
Moving from SHA-1 to SHA-2 took ~20 years - and that's the "happy path", because SHA-2 is a drop-in replacement.
The post-quantum transition is more complex: keys and signatures are larger; KEM is a cryptographic primitive with a different interface; stateful signature algorithms require special treatment for state handling. It can easily take more than 20 years.
Moving from SHA-1 to SHA-2 took ~20 years - and that's the "happy path", because SHA-2 is a drop-in replacement.
The post-quantum transition is more complex: keys and signatures are larger; KEM is a cryptographic primitive with a different interface; stateful signature algorithms require special treatment for state handling. It can easily take more than 20 years.