CRYSTALS-DILITHIUM

NIST lattice-based ML-DSA Dilithium signature.

Definition

Dilithium parameter sets: Dilithium2/ML-DSA-44 (Level 2), Dilithium3/ML-DSA-65 (Level 3, recommended), Dilithium5/ML-DSA-87 (Level 5). Sizes: Dilithium3 public key 1952 bytes, signature 3293 bytes, arbitrary message. Performance: Sign ~3M ops/sec, Verify ~12M ops/sec on modern CPU, 100-1000x faster than equivalent SPHINCS+. Open-source: pqcrystals/dilithium reference, liboqs, Cloudflare CIRCL Go, OpenSSL 3.5.

Origin

CRYSTALS-Dilithium submitted to NIST PQC Round 1 November 2017 ; selected NIST PQC standard July 2022 ; standardised FIPS 204 13 August 2024.

Example in context

BSI (Bundesamt fur Sicherheit Germany) recommends ML-DSA-87 for government applications code signing in its TR-02102-1 update 2024 ; progressively replaces ECDSA-P256 and RSA-3072.

Related terms

• CRYSTALS Kyber — partner KEM.