news analysisMay 26, 20265 mins
The tech world is rapidly waking up to the security threat posed by future quantum computers, which will be able to break the encryption we now use to protect our internet existences with ease. Against that backdrop, Apple’s decision to share iPhone and Mac post-quantum cryptography code on GitHub speaks volumes.
Lost in the fog of reporting over the Memorial Day weekend, this protection implements Apple’s versions of the standardized quantum-secure ML-KEM and ML-DSA algorithms. The newly-published material includes source code for corecrypto, the cryptographic library used by Apple’s Security framework, CryptoKit, and CommonCrypto. The company also published a white paper explaining more, including how it’s been testing its protection.
Post-quantum to its core
Apple has been working on post-quantum cryptographic protection for years. It first went public with this effort when it introduced iMessage’s PQ3 protocol in iOS 17.4. That protection secures both the conversation and its encryption keys against future quantum-based attacks. It is now available in iMessage, VPN, and TLS networking, while CryptoKit means developers can adopt quantum-secure encryption in their own apps.
