Singapore, November 2025 — PQStation is proud to share that our co-founders Dr. Prasanna Ravi, Dr. Shivam Bhasin, and Prof. Anupam Chattopadhyay have been awarded the Best Paper Award at the Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems (CHES) 2025 conference.
Their paper, titled “KyberSlash: Exploiting Secret-Dependent Division Timings in Kyber Implementations,” was co-authored with Dr. Daniel J. Bernstein, Dr. Karthikeyan Bhargavan, Dr. Tee Kiah C., Dr. Matthias Kannwischer, Dr. Franziskus Kiefer, Dr. Thales B. Paiva, and Dr. Goutam Tamvada.
About the Research
The award-winning paper presents a critical side-channel attack—KyberSlash—that uncovers timing vulnerabilities in multiple open-source implementations of Kyber, the lattice-based encryption algorithm recently standardised by NIST as MLKEM.
By identifying and exploiting secret-dependent division operations, the research team demonstrated that these subtle timing leaks could compromise key secrecy in certain implementations. Following responsible disclosure, maintainers of the affected libraries promptly patched the vulnerabilities, underscoring the importance of robust implementation testing even after algorithm standardisation.
Advancing the Security of Post-Quantum Implementations
The findings from KyberSlash reinforce a crucial message: standardisation alone does not guarantee implementation security. Even mathematically secure algorithms require careful review of their real-world code paths to eliminate side-channel risks.
PQStation’s leadership in this research reflects our broader mission to ensure that Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC)deployments across industries are both theoretically sound and implementation-secure. As part of our ongoing work, we continue to integrate lessons from such discoveries into our products and frameworks—helping enterprises achieve true quantum-safe assurance.
Acknowledging Collaborative Excellence
We congratulate all co-authors for their outstanding contribution to the cryptographic community. The recognition at CHES 2025 highlights the global impact of continued academic-industry collaboration in building safer cryptographic ecosystems for the Post-Quantum Era.
