Mastodawn

Google has devised a means for securing HTTPS certificates against quantum computing attacks without massive performance hits stemming from the considerably longer size of data required to be included.

Is anyone following this work?

https://security.googleblog.com/2026/02/cultivating-robust-and-efficient.html

Cultivating a robust and efficient quantum-safe HTTPS

Posted by Chrome Secure Web and Networking Team Today we're announcing a new program in Chrome to make HTTPS certificates secure against ...

Google Online Security Blog

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Andrei Kucharavy Feb 27

@dangoodin this problem has been solved for a while using symmetric encryption after a QR assymetric handshake for a while now, no?

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Sophie Schmieg Feb 27

@andrei_chiffa @dangoodin the issue is the size of the handshake itself. You have to run the entire handshake before you can transmit data. With PQC, what used to be a 32 to 256 byte public key or signature now each becomes 1 to 3.5 KB in size. This is acceptable for the key agreement parts, since we really only need one artifact per party there, but becomes way too expensive when talking about the certificate, i.e. a chain of public keys signed by keys further up.
Merkle Tree Certificates are a proposal that significantly compresses this certificate chain, at the cost of a more complicated trust management story.

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Neil Madden

@sophieschmieg @andrei_chiffa @dangoodin I’m a bit confused by this. The client is still going to need the public keys, right? So is this just replacing the signatures with a Merkle proof? Have you done a blockchain??!