OLN | Haystack: a post-quantum-secure distributed signature scheme
Project information
submitted by
Leoš Sokolowski
Co-Authors
Fabian Platz, Leoš Sokolowski
Mentors
Jannis Leuther, Prof. Dr. Stefan Lucks
Faculty:
Media
Degree programme:
Informatik (Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.))
Type of project presentation
Exhibition
Semester
Summer semester 2026
- Bauhausstraße 11
(InfoSec Lab, K16 (Keller))
Open Lab Night
Project description
Haystack is a distributed signature scheme. This means that a group of so-called »trustees« can collectively generate a valid digital signature, whereas individual trustees or smaller groups of trustees cannot sign validly on their own. Haystack is a hash-based signature scheme which is compatible with existing non-distributed signature schemes such as LMS or XMSS. This is why Haystack will remain secure even in a future where quantum computers are used to attack cryptographic schemes.
Haystack was jointly developed by researchers at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and is set to be standardized. Work is currently underway at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar on Haystack reference implementations.
Here, you can learn more about Haystack, for example:
– how multiple “trustees” can jointly sign a digital document using Haystack,
– why (and with regard to which attacks) Haystack is secure,
– why Haystack requires a “Common Reference Value”, a large but non-secret dataset, for signing