pqblocks-wire

A small, length-prefixed binary frame (PQCWF1) that carries an ML-KEM ciphertext, an ML-DSA signature, an SLH-DSA signature and a payload, with a strict parser. It also has thin wrappers for ML-KEM / ML-DSA / SLH-DSA key generation, encapsulation and signing, a composite ML-DSA-65 + Ed25519 signature, and an X25519 + ML-KEM-768 hybrid secret.

When to use it: you need to move post-quantum ciphertexts and signatures between Python services in one self-describing blob, and you control both ends.

Standards involved: the primitives are FIPS 203 (ML-KEM), FIPS 204 (ML-DSA) and FIPS 205 (SLH-DSA). This package does not implement them: it calls liboqs through liboqs-python. X25519 and Ed25519 come from pyca/cryptography. The frame format is this package's own and is not an IETF or NIST format.

pip install git+https://github.com/PQBlocks/pqc-wireformat        # needs the liboqs shared library, see "Requirements"

from pqblocks_wire import (generate_mlkem_keypair, encapsulate_mlkem, decapsulate_mlkem,
                           encode_wire_format, decode_wire_format)

pk, sk = generate_mlkem_keypair("ML-KEM-768")
ct, ss_sender = encapsulate_mlkem(pk, "ML-KEM-768")
frame = encode_wire_format(mlkem_ciphertext=ct, payload=b"hello")      # 1109 bytes
received = decode_wire_format(frame)
ss_receiver = decapsulate_mlkem(sk, received.mlkem_ciphertext, "ML-KEM-768")
print(ss_sender == ss_receiver, received.payload)                    # True b'hello'

Requirements

• Python: 3.11 to 3.14.
• Runtime dependencies:
  • liboqs-python, for ML-KEM, ML-DSA and SLH-DSA.
  • cryptography (pyca), for X25519 and Ed25519.
• System library: liboqs. liboqs-python needs the liboqs shared library. This release was tested with liboqs 0.16.0 and liboqs-python 0.16.0.1.
  • Install liboqs, then point to it: export OQS_LIB_PATH=/path/to/liboqs.so (or put it on the system loader path, e.g. /usr/local/lib plus ldconfig).
  • If liboqs-python cannot find the library, it tries to download and build liboqs itself on first import. That needs git, cmake and a compiler.
• Optional: kyber-py. It is only needed for encapsulate_kat_mlkem and the tests that use it.

Why

• One frame, strict parsing. The decoder rejects:
  • bad magic or an unknown version;
  • truncation at any byte;
  • components above the largest FIPS sizes;
  • trailing bytes.
• Maintained primitives only. Every primitive is delegated to liboqs or pyca. No cryptographic algorithm is re-implemented here.
• Honest test record: 219 tests (209 pass, 10 skipped), with 98 % statement coverage. With the official vector corpus configured (PQBLOCKS_VECTORS), 218 pass and 1 is skipped: the ML-KEM and SLH-DSA tests then compare this package's outputs with the NIST ACVP vectors. TESTING.md says plainly what the tests do not check; in particular, no ML-DSA output is compared with a vector.

Usage

The frame

"PQCWF1" (6 bytes) | version = 0x01 (1 byte) | flags (1 byte)
then, for each flag set, in this fixed order:  u32 big-endian length | bytes
    0x01 ML-KEM ciphertext   (at most 1568 bytes, the ML-KEM-1024 size)
    0x02 ML-DSA signature    (at most 4627 bytes, the ML-DSA-87 size)
    0x04 SLH-DSA signature   (at most 49856 bytes, the largest SLH-DSA size)
    0x08 payload             (any length; an empty payload is not written)

• What the frame does not say: it carries no algorithm or parameter-set identifier. The receiver must know which parameter set was used.
• No integrity: the frame adds no integrity protection. Sign the payload (see examples/signed_frame.py), and verify before trusting it.
• Decoding: the decoder returns DecodedWireFormat. Absent components are None, and an absent payload is b"".

Primitives

• ML-KEM: "ML-KEM-512", "ML-KEM-768", "ML-KEM-1024".
• ML-DSA: "ML-DSA-44", "ML-DSA-65", "ML-DSA-87".
• SLH-DSA: liboqs names, e.g. "SLH_DSA_PURE_SHA2_128F". There are 12 in total: SHA2 / SHAKE × 128 / 192 / 256 × s / f.
• Randomness: all key generation and signing is randomised by liboqs.

Composite signature and hybrid secret

• Composite signature: composite_sign signs M' = "CompositeAlgorithmSignatures2025" || label || len(ctx) || ctx || SHA-512(M) with both ML-DSA-65 and Ed25519. composite_verify is True only if both verify.
• Hybrid secret: hybrid_key_exchange_initiator / _responder give both sides SHA-256(X25519 secret || ML-KEM-768 secret).
• See Limitations before using either.

API reference

Real signatures from the code. Everything is importable from pqblocks_wire.

pqblocks_wire.lane_root_mlkem is an older, smaller copy of pqblocks_wire.mlkem (230 vs 351 lines), kept because the test suite imports it. Do not use it.

Limitations

• Partial official-vector testing, off by default. The vector corpora are not shipped. With PQBLOCKS_VECTORS set, ML-KEM key generation, encapsulation and decapsulation are compared byte for byte with the ACVP FIPS 203 vectors, and the SLH-DSA wrapper is run on the ACVP FIPS 205 external/pure vectors with an empty context (36 of the signing and verification vectors, plus all 120 key-generation vectors). SLH-DSA signatures are not compared byte for byte (liboqs signs with fresh randomness), and no ML-DSA output is compared with any vector. Details are in TESTING.md.

• Hybrid secret is a plain hash combiner:

  • it has no domain-separation label;
  • it does not bind the ciphertext or the public keys;
  • its X25519 half is static-static, so that half has no forward secrecy;
  • it is fixed to ML-KEM-768;
  • it is not X-Wing and not the TLS 1.3 hybrid key schedule.

  Feed it into your own transcript-bound KDF, or use X-Wing.

• The composite signature does not interoperate with draft-ietf-lamps-pq-composite-sigs. The label, the ML-DSA context handling and the serialization differ from the draft.

• No ML-DSA / SLH-DSA context strings: sign_mldsa and sign_slhdsa have no ctx argument.

• Secret-key lengths are not checked. A wrong-length secret key leads to an out-of-bounds read inside liboqs. Pass only keys produced by this package or by liboqs.

• Not deterministic despite their docstrings: the private _keygen_from_seed / _sign_from_seed / _verify_from_seed helpers are not seed-deterministic. Do not use them.

• Import-time output: importing the package prints WARNING: lines to stdout when kyber-py is not installed. liboqs-python itself prints liboqs-python faulthandler is disabled.

• No algorithm id in the frame: the receiver must already know the parameter sets.

Security notes

The package handles key material but has had no external audit. It is not FIPS 140 / CMVP validated. Read SECURITY_NOTES.md for the review findings: 7 medium and 6 low, none critical or high.

Verification

TESTING.md · BENCHMARKS.md · EVIDENCE.md · VERIFICATION_REPORT.md · USE_CASES.md · SECURITY_NOTES.md

Part of PQBlocks

PQBlocks builds open, tested building blocks for the post-quantum transition. This package is its wire-format and integration layer over maintained post-quantum libraries.