Q: What is your current role/background, and how did you first get involved with Open Quantum Safe (OQS)?
A: My name is Rodrigo Martín Sánchez-Ledesma. I am a mathematician from Spain, with a background in Computer Science as well. I work at Indra, a Spanish technological company, where I currently serve as PQC Technical Lead. I have been working on projects related to research, implementation and adoption of cryptography for more than five years now.
For me, as probably with thousands of other, OQS was the first real, tangible interaction with Post-Quantum cryptography. I remember compiling liboqs just to interact with the algorithms, and measure their performance. The ability that OQS has had to introduce and facilitate PQ adoption worldwide is just astonishing. It makes me really proud to be able to help the organization in such an important endeavour.
Q: As the new TSC co-chair, what are your main areas of focus or goals for the project?
A: We are in a very interesting time for Post-Quantum Cryptography, the post-NIST standards era. On one hand, PQC is starting to get adopted and included in more and more situations by the day. On the other, there is still a lot of research lines to be completed, a lot of questions to be answered and, in general, a lot of work to be done. My main focus is for OQS to continue to be one of the primary drivers of post-quantum research, and to continue to be a relevant actor in the development of the field. The changing post-quantum landscape is the one determining how that looks like, and in which particular areas the organization can be most helpful.
Q: What is the group working on right now (goals, challenges/milestones…)?
A: Right now, one of the biggest focus of the organization is to provide support for new algorithms that are of relevance to the cryptographic community, either because they are under consideration for standardization (e.g. the round 3 candidates from NIST’s on-ramp signature process) or directly selected for standardization (e.g. HQC-KEM). The former allows to provide a more fined analysis of the candidates under consideration, as well as comparative analysis and inclusion onto relevant protocols and applications, which can help tip the scales towards their selection. For the latter, the inclusion of relevant features of standardized algorithms (e.g. external-mu support for ML-DSA) is also a way to advance research. The current milestone is to be able to have a relevant batch of new algorithms included before the end of the year. It is ambitious, but we are working towards it.
There is also a number of challenges that we are facing: the development of AI models has created a surge in both analysis and PR development, which takes a toll in our capacity for response and analysis. This is a challenge that is not unique to us, and most open source projects are reporting this same behavior. Another example is the discontinuance of implementations for certain algorithms, which impacts our ability to support them.
Q: How can new contributors or community members best get involved with the project?
A: OQS is always looking forward to new contributors to help advance the project. I think there are a wide range of different issues or features in which help would be most appreciated: from hands on helping in our quest toward new algorithms inclusion, to working on some of the wrappers that provide support to a variety of languages, or helping with more security-related items (constant time analysis tools, bug identification and fixing and many more!).
If people want to collaborate with the project, they can just take a look at the backlog of any of the subprojects of the organization and try to work on the one that is more appealing to their interests. We try to label some of them as “Good first issue” for someone who is working with us for the first time. They can also join our weekly calls to see the debate live, and get feedback and help directly. That is also something that I really value about the organization, the sense of community that it has, and how open and welcoming is. So please don’t hesitate to work with us, throw your ideas into the ring, ask any questions or just provide feedback of how OQS could be more helpful!