Paper 2025/1245 Original: eprint.iacr.org/2025/1245 ↗

Integrating and Benchmarking KpqC in TLS/X.509

Abstract

This paper reports on the implementation and performance evaluation of Korean Post-Quantum Cryptography standards within existing TLS/X.509 infrastructure. We integrated HAETAE, AIMer, SMAUG-T, and NTRU+—the four KpqC standard algorithms—into the OpenSSL ecosystem via a modified liboqs framework. Then, we measured static overhead (certificate size) and dynamic overhead (TLS handshake latency) under both computational-bound (localhost) and network-bound (LAN) settings. Our results indicate that, focusing on the Korean standards, KpqC certificates are 11.5–48 times larger than the classical ECC baseline. In performance, the tested KpqC KEMs increase handshake latency by over 750\% in computation-bound tests (localhost) and by up to 35\% in network-bound tests (LAN). To our knowledge, this study constitutes the first practical evaluation of KpqC standards in real-world TLS environments, providing concrete performance data to guide post-quantum migration strategies.