FIPS-205 SLH-DSA bindings for botan3

The botan library implements NIST's FIP-205 SLH-DSA signature and exposes botan3 python bindings.

This module wraps these bindings to help usage of SLH-DSA in python:

from slh_dsa_botan3 import slh_params

slh_dsa = slh_params.from_string('SLH-DSA-SHAKE-128s')

private_key = slh_dsa.generate_keypair()
public_key = private_key.get_public_key()

message = "hello world"
signature = private_key.sign(message)

assert public_key.verify(message, signature)

See documentation for more examples.

Quick setup

You need a working botan3 installation:

% botan --version
3.7.1

You may need to install python3-botan depending on your distribution:

% python -c 'import botan3; print(botan3.version_string())'
Botan 3.7.1 (release, dated 20250205, revision git:09cc7f97ceb828c19461b2a63f820d3226bb921b, distribution unspecified)

It is recommended to work in a virtual environment as follows:

% python3 -m venv --system-site-packages botan3 venv
% source venv/bin/activate

You can then install slh_dsa_botan3 using the following:

% pip install slh_dsa_botan3

Note that this is experimental and may include mistakes, use with care!

Tests & Validation

This module has optional dependencies required for testing and development:

% pip install -r requirements-dev.txt

You can use the following recipe to run all tests:

make tests

This will in sequence:

• run ./tests/sync-ACVP-Server.sh to populate ./tests/ACVP-Server with ACVP test vectors
• run ./tests/liboqs/liboqs-python.sh to build and install liboqs in ./venv/share/liboqs
• run all tests, including:
  • basic unit tests
  • few fixed test vectors
  • all external ACVP test vectors (without prehash)
  • basic interoperability with liboqs Sphincs3.1+ implementation

Note that this module offer no support for SLH-DSA pre-hashing nor context binding.