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TLS Post-Quantum Migration — draft-ietf-tls-ecdhe-mlkem, draft-ietf-tls-mldsa, draft-ietf-tls-trust-anchor-ids#

IETF 122 (Bangkok) digest Program Adjacent pick Bangkok · 15–21 March 2025

Slides Session recording Materials

  • Tier: Adjacent
  • Why: The concrete mechanics of the PQ transition landing in the protocol every service already depends on — worth tracking for when to start budgeting for larger handshakes and certificate chains.
  • What: ecdhe-mlkem defines three hybrid key-agreement mechanisms combining ML-KEM with ECDHE (X25519MLKEM768, SecP256r1MLKEM768, SecP384r1MLKEM1024). mldsa specifies using the ML-DSA post-quantum signature scheme (FIPS 204) for TLS 1.3 authentication. trust-anchor-ids lets servers describe available certification paths more succinctly and lets clients select among many trusted CAs, easing the transition-era problem of bloated trust stores. (from abstract only)
  • How: Hybrid key agreement combines classical and PQ shared secrets so an attacker must break both; trust-anchor IDs can be advertised in DNS for lower-latency negotiation.
  • Where applicable: General TLS 1.3 deployments planning a PQ migration path; hybrid schemes are the deployment-safe default while PQ-only confidence is still building.