QCBRIEF
A consortium co funded by an EU semiconductor funding program will prototype post quantum cryptography on the standard smart card chips already used in European eIDs, with firmware that can be updated to new quantum resistant algorithms as
Europe's national electronic ID cards are protected by encryption that predates quantum computing. The bottleneck for swapping in quantum-resistant algorithms is the limited memory and compute of the tamper-resistant chips inside already-issued cards. Munich-based security technology group Giesecke+Devrient (G+D) has now joined the European consortium trying to solve that.
G+D is the newest member of uPQComing, a research consortium co-funded by the EU's Chips Joint Undertaking. Inside the project, G+D will prototype a Java Card operating system with post-quantum cryptography (PQC), new mathematical schemes designed to resist attacks by future quantum computers, and build "crypto-agile" firmware that can swap algorithms as standards evolve.
Lattice-based PQC schemes, the family most likely to be standardized, use larger keys and more compute than today's RSA and ECC. G+D's prior proof-of-concept with Germany's Bundesdruckerei and Infineon showed PQC running on a German national ID card. uPQComing is meant to scale that work across EU member states.
"The next generation of identities will be quantum-safe by design," Gabriel von Mitschke-Collande said in the company's release, framing the work as part of Europe's technological sovereignty.
The consortium does not address the card refresh cycle. Real ID cards will carry the new algorithms only when national authorities reissue them.