Looma: Low-Latency Post-Quantum Authentication for TLS 1.3 in Datacenters
draft-ma-cfrg-looma-00
| Document | Type |
Expired Internet-Draft
(individual)
Expired & archived
|
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Authors | Xinshu Ma , Michio Honda , Colin Perkins | ||
| Last updated | 2026-09-03 (Latest revision 2026-03-02) | ||
| RFC stream | (None) | ||
| Intended RFC status | (None) | ||
| Formats | |||
| Stream | Stream state | (No stream defined) | |
| Consensus boilerplate | Unknown | ||
| RFC Editor Note | (None) | ||
| IESG | IESG state | Expired | |
| Telechat date | (None) | ||
| Responsible AD | (None) | ||
| Send notices to | (None) |
This Internet-Draft is no longer active. A copy of the expired Internet-Draft is available in these formats:
Abstract
Post-quantum (PQ) authentication in TLS 1.3 can add tens to hundreds of microseconds of handshake processing time. In datacenters, where mutual authentication is mandatory, this authentication cost becomes a dominant contributor to end-to-end request latency, particularly when connections are short-lived and handshake rates are high. This document specifies Looma, an online/offline authentication architecture integrated into the TLS 1.3 handshake. Looma replaces the on-path, per-handshake PQ signature with a fast, one-time signature over the TLS transcript and moves expensive work (including the multi-use PQ signature) to an asynchronous background plane. Looma includes a fallback strategy to preserve correct authentication when the verifier does not have the peer's one-time verification key cached.
Authors
Xinshu Ma
Michio Honda
Colin Perkins
(Note: The e-mail addresses provided for the authors of this Internet-Draft may no longer be valid.)