



Network Working Group                                         D. Stebila
Internet-Draft                                    University of Waterloo
Intended status: Informational                                S. Fluhrer
Expires: 11 March 2026                                     Cisco Systems
                                                               S. Gueron
                                                         U. Haifa & Meta
                                                        7 September 2025


                     Hybrid key exchange in TLS 1.3
                    draft-ietf-tls-hybrid-design-16

Abstract

   Hybrid key exchange refers to using multiple key exchange algorithms
   simultaneously and combining the result with the goal of providing
   security even if a way is found to defeat the encryption for all but
   one of the component algorithms.  It is motivated by transition to
   post-quantum cryptography.  This document provides a construction for
   hybrid key exchange in the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol
   version 1.3.

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF).  Note that other groups may also distribute
   working documents as Internet-Drafts.  The list of current Internet-
   Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on 11 March 2026.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2025 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/
   license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document.
   Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights



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   and restrictions with respect to this document.  Code Components
   extracted from this document must include Revised BSD License text as
   described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are
   provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
     1.1.  Revision history  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
     1.2.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     1.3.  Motivation for use of hybrid key exchange . . . . . . . .   6
     1.4.  Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     1.5.  Goals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   2.  Key encapsulation mechanisms  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   3.  Construction for hybrid key exchange  . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
     3.1.  Negotiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
     3.2.  Transmitting public keys and ciphertexts  . . . . . . . .  10
     3.3.  Shared secret calculation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
   4.  Discussion  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
   5.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
   6.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
   7.  Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16
   8.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16
     8.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16
     8.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  17
   Appendix A.  Related work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  22
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  23

1.  Introduction

   This document gives a construction for hybrid key exchange in TLS
   1.3.  The overall design approach is a simple, "concatenation"-based
   approach: each hybrid key exchange combination should be viewed as a
   single new key exchange method, negotiated and transmitted using the
   existing TLS 1.3 mechanisms.

   This document does not propose specific post-quantum mechanisms; see
   Section 1.4 for more on the scope of this document.

1.1.  Revision history

      *RFC Editor's Note:* Please remove this section prior to
      publication of a final version of this document.

   Earlier versions of this document categorized various design
   decisions one could make when implementing hybrid key exchange in TLS
   1.3.




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   *  draft-ietf-tls-hybrid-design-12:

      -  Editorial changes

      -  Change Kyber references to ML-KEM references

   *  draft-ietf-tls-hybrid-design-10:

      -  Clarifications on shared secret and public key generation

   *  draft-ietf-tls-hybrid-design-09:

      -  Remove IANA registry requests

      -  Editorial changes

   *  draft-ietf-tls-hybrid-design-09:

      -  Removal of TBD hybrid combinations using Kyber512 or secp384r1

      -  Editorial changes

   *  draft-ietf-tls-hybrid-design-08:

      -  Add reference to ECP256R1Kyber768 and KyberDraft00 drafts

   *  draft-ietf-tls-hybrid-design-07:

      -  Editorial changes

      -  Add reference to X25519Kyber768 draft

   *  draft-ietf-tls-hybrid-design-06:

      -  Bump to version -06 to avoid expiry

   *  draft-ietf-tls-hybrid-design-05:

      -  Define four hybrid key exchange methods

      -  Updates to reflect NIST's selection of Kyber

      -  Clarifications and rewordings based on working group comments

   *  draft-ietf-tls-hybrid-design-04:

      -  Some wording changes




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      -  Remove design considerations appendix

   *  draft-ietf-tls-hybrid-design-03:

      -  Remove specific code point examples and requested codepoint
         range for hybrid private use

      -  Change "Open questions" to "Discussion"

      -  Some wording changes

   *  draft-ietf-tls-hybrid-design-02:

      -  Bump to version -02 to avoid expiry

   *  draft-ietf-tls-hybrid-design-01:

      -  Forbid variable-length secret keys

      -  Use fixed-length KEM public keys/ciphertexts

   *  draft-ietf-tls-hybrid-design-00:

      -  Allow key_exchange values from the same algorithm to be reused
         across multiple KeyShareEntry records in the same ClientHello.

   *  draft-stebila-tls-hybrid-design-03:

      -  Add requirement for KEMs to provide protection against key
         reuse.

      -  Clarify FIPS-compliance of shared secret concatenation method.

   *  draft-stebila-tls-hybrid-design-02:

      -  Design considerations from draft-stebila-tls-hybrid-design-00
         and draft-stebila-tls-hybrid-design-01 are moved to the
         appendix.

      -  A single construction is given in the main body.

   *  draft-stebila-tls-hybrid-design-01:

      -  Add (Comb-KDF-1) and (Comb-KDF-2) options.

      -  Add two candidate instantiations.

   *  draft-stebila-tls-hybrid-design-00: Initial version.



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1.2.  Terminology

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
   "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in
   BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
   capitals, as shown here.

   For the purposes of this document, it is helpful to be able to divide
   cryptographic algorithms into two classes:

   *  "Traditional" algorithms: Algorithms that are widely deployed
      today, but may be deprecated in the future.  In the context of TLS
      1.3, examples of traditional key exchange algorithms include
      elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman using secp256r1 or x25519, or
      finite-field Diffie-Hellman.

   *  "Next-generation" (or "next-gen") algorithms: Algorithms that are
      not yet widely deployed, but may eventually be widely deployed.
      An additional facet of these algorithms may be that the
      cryptographic community has less confidence in their security due
      to them being relatively new or less studied.  This includes
      "post-quantum" algorithms.

   "Hybrid" key exchange, in this context, means the use of two (or
   more) key exchange algorithms based on different cryptographic
   assumptions, e.g., one traditional algorithm and one next-gen
   algorithm, with the purpose of the final session key being secure as
   long as at least one of the component key exchange algorithms remains
   unbroken.  When one of the algorithms is traditional and one of them
   is post-quantum, this is a Post-Quantum Traditional Hybrid Scheme
   [PQUIP-TERM]; while this is the initial use case for this document,
   the document is not limited to this case.  This document uses the
   term "component" algorithms to refer to the algorithms combined in a
   hybrid key exchange.

   Some researchers prefer the phrase "composite" to refer to the use of
   multiple algorithms, to distinguish from "hybrid public key
   encryption" in which a key encapsulation mechanism and data
   encapsulation mechanism are combined to create public key encryption.

   It is intended that the component algorithms within a hybrid key
   exchange are to be performed, that is, negotiated and transmitted,
   within the TLS 1.3 handshake.  Any out-of-band method of exchanging
   keying material is considered out-of-scope.






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   The primary motivation of this document is preparing for post-quantum
   algorithms.  However, it is possible that public key cryptography
   based on alternative mathematical constructions will be desired to
   mitigate risks independent of the advent of a quantum computer, for
   example because of a cryptanalytic breakthrough.  As such this
   document opts for the more generic term "next-generation" algorithms
   rather than exclusively "post-quantum" algorithms.

   Note that TLS 1.3 uses the phrase "groups" to refer to key exchange
   algorithms -- for example, the supported_groups extension -- since
   all key exchange algorithms in TLS 1.3 are Diffie-Hellman-based.  As
   a result, some parts of this document will refer to data structures
   or messages with the term "group" in them despite using a key
   exchange algorithm that is neither Diffie-Hellman-based nor a group.

1.3.  Motivation for use of hybrid key exchange

   A hybrid key exchange algorithm allows early adopters eager for post-
   quantum security to have the potential of post-quantum security
   (possibly from a less-well-studied algorithm) while still retaining
   at least the security currently offered by traditional algorithms.
   They may even need to retain traditional algorithms due to regulatory
   constraints, for example US National Institute of Standards and
   Technology (NIST) FIPS compliance.

   Ideally, one would not use hybrid key exchange: one would have
   confidence in a single algorithm and parameterization that will stand
   the test of time.  However, this may not be the case in the face of
   quantum computers and cryptanalytic advances more generally.

   Many (though not all) post-quantum algorithms currently under
   consideration are relatively new; they have not been subject to the
   same depth of study as RSA and finite-field or elliptic curve Diffie-
   Hellman, and thus the security community does not necessarily have as
   much confidence in their fundamental security, or the concrete
   security level of specific parameterizations.

   Moreover, it is possible that after next-generation algorithms are
   defined, and for a period of time thereafter, conservative users may
   not have full confidence in some algorithms.











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   Some users may want to accelerate adoption of post-quantum
   cryptography due to the threat of retroactive decryption (also known
   as harvest-now-decrypt-later): if a cryptographic assumption is
   broken due to the advent of a quantum computer or some other
   cryptanalytic breakthrough, confidentiality of information can be
   broken retroactively by any adversary who has passively recorded
   handshakes and encrypted communications.  Hybrid key exchange enables
   potential security against retroactive decryption while not fully
   abandoning traditional cryptosystems.

   As such, there may be users for whom hybrid key exchange is an
   appropriate step prior to an eventual transition to next-generation
   algorithms.  Users should consider the confidence they have in each
   hybrid component to assess that the hybrid system meets the desired
   motivation.

1.4.  Scope

   This document focuses on hybrid ephemeral key exchange in TLS 1.3
   [TLS13].  It intentionally does not address:

   *  Selecting which next-generation algorithms to use in TLS 1.3, or
      algorithm identifiers or encoding mechanisms for next-generation
      algorithms.

   *  Authentication using next-generation algorithms.  While quantum
      computers could retroactively decrypt previous sessions, session
      authentication cannot be retroactively broken.

1.5.  Goals

   The primary goal of a hybrid key exchange mechanism is to facilitate
   the establishment of a shared secret which remains secure as long as
   one of the component key exchange mechanisms remains unbroken.

   In addition to the primary cryptographic goal, there may be several
   additional goals in the context of TLS 1.3:

   *  *Backwards compatibility:* Clients and servers who are "hybrid-
      aware", i.e., compliant with whatever hybrid key exchange standard
      is developed for TLS, should remain compatible with endpoints and
      middle-boxes that are not hybrid-aware.  The three scenarios to
      consider are:

      1.  Hybrid-aware client, hybrid-aware server: These parties should
          establish a hybrid shared secret.





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      2.  Hybrid-aware client, non-hybrid-aware server: These parties
          should establish a non-hybrid shared secret (assuming the
          hybrid-aware client is willing to downgrade to non-hybrid-
          only).

      3.  Non-hybrid-aware client, hybrid-aware server: These parties
          should establish a non-hybrid shared secret (assuming the
          hybrid-aware server is willing to downgrade to non-hybrid-
          only).

      Ideally backwards compatibility should be achieved without extra
      round trips and without sending duplicate information; see below.

   *  *High performance:* Use of hybrid key exchange should not be
      prohibitively expensive in terms of computational performance.  In
      general this will depend on the performance characteristics of the
      specific cryptographic algorithms used, and as such is outside the
      scope of this document.  See [PST] for preliminary results about
      performance characteristics.

   *  *Low latency:* Use of hybrid key exchange should not substantially
      increase the latency experienced to establish a connection.
      Factors affecting this may include the following.

      -  The computational performance characteristics of the specific
         algorithms used.  See above.

      -  The size of messages to be transmitted.  Public key and
         ciphertext sizes for post-quantum algorithms range from
         hundreds of bytes to over one hundred kilobytes, so this impact
         can be substantial.  See [PST] for preliminary results in a
         laboratory setting, and [LANGLEY] for preliminary results on
         more realistic networks.

      -  Additional round trips added to the protocol.  See below.

   *  *No extra round trips:* Attempting to negotiate hybrid key
      exchange should not lead to extra round trips in any of the three
      hybrid-aware/non-hybrid-aware scenarios listed above.

   *  *Minimal duplicate information:* Attempting to negotiate hybrid
      key exchange should not mean having to send multiple public keys
      of the same type.

   The tolerance for lower performance / increased latency due to use of
   hybrid key exchange will depend on the context and use case of the
   systems and the network involved.




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2.  Key encapsulation mechanisms

   This document models key agreement as key encapsulation mechanisms
   (KEMs), which consist of three algorithms:

   *  KeyGen() -> (pk, sk): A probabilistic key generation algorithm,
      which generates a public key pk and a secret key sk.

   *  Encaps(pk) -> (ct, ss): A probabilistic encapsulation algorithm,
      which takes as input a public key pk and outputs a ciphertext ct
      and shared secret ss.

   *  Decaps(sk, ct) -> ss: A decapsulation algorithm, which takes as
      input a secret key sk and ciphertext ct and outputs a shared
      secret ss, or in some cases a distinguished error value.

   The main security property for KEMs is indistinguishability under
   adaptive chosen ciphertext attack (IND-CCA2), which means that shared
   secret values should be indistinguishable from random strings even
   given the ability to have other arbitrary ciphertexts decapsulated.
   IND-CCA2 corresponds to security against an active attacker, and the
   public key / secret key pair can be treated as a long-term key or
   reused (see for example [KATZ] or [HHK] for definitions of IND-CCA2
   and IND-CPA security).  A common design pattern for obtaining
   security under key reuse is to apply the Fujisaki-Okamoto (FO)
   transform [FO] or a variant thereof [HHK].

   A weaker security notion is indistinguishability under chosen
   plaintext attack (IND-CPA), which means that the shared secret values
   should be indistinguishable from random strings given a copy of the
   public key.  IND-CPA roughly corresponds to security against a
   passive attacker, and sometimes corresponds to one-time key exchange.

   Key exchange in TLS 1.3 is phrased in terms of Diffie-Hellman key
   exchange in a group.  DH key exchange can be modeled as a KEM, with
   KeyGen corresponding to selecting an exponent x as the secret key and
   computing the public key g^x; encapsulation corresponding to
   selecting an exponent y, computing the ciphertext g^y and the shared
   secret g^(xy), and decapsulation as computing the shared secret
   g^(xy).  See [HPKE] for more details of such Diffie-Hellman-based key
   encapsulation mechanisms.  Diffie-Hellman key exchange, when viewed
   as a KEM, does not formally satisfy IND-CCA2 security, but is still
   safe to use for ephemeral key exchange in TLS 1.3, see for example
   [DOWLING].

   TLS 1.3 does not require that ephemeral public keys be used only in a
   single key exchange session; some implementations may reuse them, at
   the cost of limited forward secrecy.  As a result, any KEM used in



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   the manner described in this document MUST explicitly be designed to
   be secure in the event that the public key is reused.  Finite-field
   and elliptic-curve Diffie-Hellman key exchange methods used in TLS
   1.3 satisfy this criteria.  For generic KEMs, this means satisfying
   IND-CCA2 security or having a transform like the Fujisaki-Okamoto
   transform [FO] [HHK] applied.  While it is recommended that
   implementations avoid reuse of KEM public keys, implementations that
   do reuse KEM public keys MUST ensure that the number of reuses of a
   KEM public key abides by any bounds in the specification of the KEM
   or subsequent security analyses.  Implementations MUST NOT reuse
   randomness in the generation of KEM ciphertexts.

3.  Construction for hybrid key exchange

3.1.  Negotiation

   Each particular combination of algorithms in a hybrid key exchange
   will be represented as a NamedGroup and sent in the supported_groups
   extension.  No internal structure or grammar is implied or required
   in the value of the identifier; they are simply opaque identifiers.

   Each value representing a hybrid key exchange will correspond to an
   ordered pair of two or more algorithms.  (Note that this is
   independent from future documents standardizing solely post-quantum
   key exchange methods, which would have to be assigned their own
   identifier.)

3.2.  Transmitting public keys and ciphertexts

   This document takes the relatively simple "concatenation approach":
   the messages from the two or more algorithms being hybridized will be
   concatenated together and transmitted as a single value, to avoid
   having to change existing data structures.  The values are directly
   concatenated, without any additional encoding or length fields; the
   representation and length of elements MUST be fixed once the
   algorithm is fixed.

   Recall that in TLS 1.3 [TLS13] Section 4.2.8, a KEM public key or KEM
   ciphertext is represented as a KeyShareEntry:

       struct {
           NamedGroup group;
           opaque key_exchange<1..2^16-1>;
       } KeyShareEntry;

   These are transmitted in the extension_data fields of
   KeyShareClientHello and KeyShareServerHello extensions:




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       struct {
           KeyShareEntry client_shares<0..2^16-1>;
       } KeyShareClientHello;

       struct {
           KeyShareEntry server_share;
       } KeyShareServerHello;

   The client's shares are listed in descending order of client
   preference; the server selects one algorithm and sends its
   corresponding share.

   For a hybrid key exchange, the key_exchange field of a KeyShareEntry
   is the concatenation of the key_exchange field for each of the
   constituent algorithms.  The order of shares in the concatenation
   MUST be the same as the order of algorithms indicated in the
   definition of the NamedGroup.

   For the client's share, the key_exchange value contains the
   concatenation of the pk outputs of the corresponding KEMs' KeyGen
   algorithms, if that algorithm corresponds to a KEM; or the (EC)DH
   ephemeral key share, if that algorithm corresponds to an (EC)DH
   group.  For the server's share, the key_exchange value contains
   concatenation of the ct outputs of the corresponding KEMs' Encaps
   algorithms, if that algorithm corresponds to a KEM; or the (EC)DH
   ephemeral key share, if that algorithm corresponds to an (EC)DH
   group.

   [TLS13] Section 4.2.8 requires that ``The key_exchange values for
   each KeyShareEntry MUST be generated independently.'' In the context
   of this document, since the same algorithm may appear in multiple
   named groups, this document relaxes the above requirement to allow
   the same key_exchange value for the same algorithm to be reused in
   multiple KeyShareEntry records sent within the same ClientHello.
   However, key_exchange values for different algorithms MUST be
   generated independently.  Explicitly, if the NamedGroup is the hybrid
   key exchange MyECDHMyPQKEM, the KeyShareEntry.key_exchange values
   MUST be generated in one of the following two ways:

   Fully independently:











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   MyECDHMyPQKEM.KeyGen() = (MyECDH.KeyGen(), MyPQKEM.KeyGen())

   KeyShareClientHello {
       KeyShareEntry {
           NamedGroup: 'MyECDH',
           key_exchange: MyECDH.KeyGen()
       },
       KeyShareEntry {
           NamedGroup: 'MyPQKEM',
           key_exchange: MyPQKEM.KeyGen()
       },
       KeyShareEntry {
           NamedGroup: 'MyECDHMyPQKEM',
           key_exchange: MyECDHMyPQKEM.KeyGen()
       },
   }

   Reusing key_exchange values of the same component algorithm within
   the same ClientHello:

   myecdh_key_share = MyECDH.KeyGen()
   mypqkem_key_share = MyPQKEM.KeyGen()
   myecdh_mypqkem_key_share = (myecdh_key_share, mypqkem_key_share)

   KeyShareClientHello {
       KeyShareEntry {
           NamedGroup: 'MyECDH',
           key_exchange: myecdh_key_share
       },
       KeyShareEntry {
           NamedGroup: 'MyPQKEM',
           key_exchange: mypqkem_key_share
       },
       KeyShareEntry {
           NamedGroup: 'MyECDHMyPQKEM',
           key_exchange: myecdh_mypqkem_key_share
       },
   }

3.3.  Shared secret calculation

   Here this document also takes a simple "concatenation approach": the
   two shared secrets are concatenated together and used as the shared
   secret in the existing TLS 1.3 key schedule.  Again, this document
   does not add any additional structure (length fields) in the
   concatenation procedure: for both the traditional groups and post
   quantum KEMs, the shared secret output length is fixed for a specific
   elliptic curve or parameter set.



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   In other words, if the NamedGroup is MyECDHMyPQKEM, the shared secret
   is calculated as

concatenated_shared_secret = MyECDH.shared_secret || MyPQKEM.shared_secret

   and inserted into the TLS 1.3 key schedule in place of the (EC)DHE
   shared secret, as shown in Figure 1.

                                       0
                                       |
                                       v
                         PSK ->  HKDF-Extract = Early Secret
                                       |
                                       +-----> Derive-Secret(...)
                                       +-----> Derive-Secret(...)
                                       +-----> Derive-Secret(...)
                                       |
                                       v
                                 Derive-Secret(., "derived", "")
                                       |
                                       v
   concatenated_shared_secret -> HKDF-Extract = Handshake Secret
   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^          |
                                       +-----> Derive-Secret(...)
                                       +-----> Derive-Secret(...)
                                       |
                                       v
                                 Derive-Secret(., "derived", "")
                                       |
                                       v
                            0 -> HKDF-Extract = Master Secret
                                       |
                                       +-----> Derive-Secret(...)
                                       +-----> Derive-Secret(...)
                                       +-----> Derive-Secret(...)
                                       +-----> Derive-Secret(...)

               Figure 1: Key schedule for hybrid key exchange













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   *FIPS-compliance of shared secret concatenation.* The US National
   Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) documents
   [NIST-SP-800-56C] and [NIST-SP-800-135] give recommendations for key
   derivation methods in key exchange protocols.  Some hybrid
   combinations may combine the shared secret from a NIST-approved
   algorithm (e.g., ECDH using the nistp256/secp256r1 curve) with a
   shared secret from a non-approved algorithm (e.g., post-quantum).
   [NIST-SP-800-56C] lists simple concatenation as an approved method
   for generation of a hybrid shared secret in which one of the
   constituent shared secret is from an approved method.

4.  Discussion

   *Larger public keys and/or ciphertexts.* The key_exchange field in
   the KeyShareEntry struct in Section 3.2 limits public keys and
   ciphertexts to 2^16-1 bytes.  Some post-quantum KEMs have larger
   public keys and/or ciphertexts; for example, Classic McEliece's
   smallest parameter set has public key size 261,120 bytes.  However,
   all defined parameter sets for ML-KEM [NIST-FIPS-203] have public
   keys and ciphertexts that fall within the TLS constraints (although
   may result in ClientHello messages larger than a single packet).

   *Duplication of key shares.* Concatenation of public keys in the
   key_exchange field in the KeyShareEntry struct as described in
   Section 3.2 can result in sending duplicate key shares.  For example,
   if a client wanted to offer support for two combinations, say
   "SecP256r1MLKEM768" and "X25519MLKEM768" [ECDHE-MLKEM], it would end
   up sending two ML-KEM-768 public keys, since the KeyShareEntry for
   each combination contains its own copy of a ML-KEM-768 key.  This
   duplication may be more problematic for post-quantum algorithms which
   have larger public keys.  On the other hand, if the client wants to
   offer, for example "SecP256r1MLKEM768" and "secp256r1" (for backwards
   compatibility), there is relatively little duplicated data (as the
   secp256r1 keys are comparatively small).

   *Failures.* Some post-quantum key exchange algorithms, including ML-
   KEM [NIST-FIPS-203], have non-zero probability of failure, meaning
   two honest parties may derive different shared secrets.  This would
   cause a handshake failure.  ML-KEM has a cryptographically small
   failure rate; if other algorithms are used, implementers should be
   aware of the potential of handshake failure.  Clients MAY retry if a
   failure is encountered.









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5.  IANA Considerations

   IANA will assign identifiers from the TLS Supported Groups registry
   [IANATLS] for the hybrid combinations defined following this
   document.  These assignments should be made in a range that is
   distinct from the Finite Field Groups range.  For these entries in
   the TLS Supported Groups registry, the "Recommended" column SHOULD be
   "N" and the "DTLS-OK" column SHOULD be "Y".

6.  Security Considerations

   The shared secrets computed in the hybrid key exchange should be
   computed in a way that achieves the "hybrid" property: the resulting
   secret is secure as long as at least one of the component key
   exchange algorithms is unbroken.  See [GIACON] and [BINDEL] for an
   investigation of these issues.  Under the assumption that shared
   secrets are fixed length once the combination is fixed, the
   construction from Section 3.3 corresponds to the dual-PRF combiner of
   [BINDEL] which is shown to preserve security under the assumption
   that the hash function is a dual-PRF.

   As noted in Section 2, KEMs used in the manner described in this
   document MUST explicitly be designed to be secure in the event that
   the public key is reused, such as achieving IND-CCA2 security or
   having a transform like the Fujisaki-Okamoto transform applied.  ML-
   KEM has such security properties.  However, some other post-quantum
   KEMs designed to be IND-CPA-secure (i.e., without countermeasures
   such as the FO transform) are completely insecure under public key
   reuse; for example, some lattice-based IND-CPA-secure KEMs are
   vulnerable to attacks that recover the private key after just a few
   thousand samples [FLUHRER].

   *Public keys, ciphertexts, and secrets should be constant length.*
   This document assumes that the length of each public key, ciphertext,
   and shared secret is fixed once the algorithm is fixed.  This is the
   case for ML-KEM.

   Note that variable-length secrets are, generally speaking, dangerous.
   In particular, when using key material of variable length and
   processing it using hash functions, a timing side channel may arise.
   In broad terms, when the secret is longer, the hash function may need
   to process more blocks internally.  In some unfortunate
   circumstances, this has led to timing attacks, e.g., the Lucky
   Thirteen [LUCKY13] and Raccoon [RACCOON] attacks.

   Furthermore, [AVIRAM] identified a risk of using variable-length
   secrets when the hash function used in the key derivation function is
   no longer collision-resistant.



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   If concatenation were to be used with values that are not fixed-
   length, a length prefix or other unambiguous encoding would need to
   be used to ensure that the composition of the two values is injective
   and requires a mechanism different from that specified in this
   document.

   Therefore, this specification MUST only be used with algorithms which
   have fixed-length shared secrets (after the variant has been fixed by
   the algorithm identifier in the NamedGroup negotiation in
   Section 3.1).

7.  Acknowledgements

   These ideas have grown from discussions with many colleagues,
   including Christopher Wood, Matt Campagna, Eric Crockett, Deirdre
   Connolly, authors of the various hybrid Internet-Drafts and
   implementations cited in this document, and members of the TLS
   working group.  The immediate impetus for this document came from
   discussions with attendees at the Workshop on Post-Quantum Software
   in Mountain View, California, in January 2019.  Daniel J.  Bernstein
   and Tanja Lange commented on the risks of reuse of ephemeral public
   keys.  Matt Campagna and the team at Amazon Web Services provided
   additional suggestions.  Nimrod Aviram proposed restricting to fixed-
   length secrets.

8.  References

8.1.  Normative References

   [FO]       Fujisaki, E. and T. Okamoto, "Secure Integration of
              Asymmetric and Symmetric Encryption Schemes", Springer
              Science and Business Media LLC, Journal of Cryptology vol.
              26, no. 1, pp. 80-101, DOI 10.1007/s00145-011-9114-1,
              December 2011,
              <https://doi.org/10.1007/s00145-011-9114-1>.

   [HHK]      Hofheinz, D., Hövelmanns, K., and E. Kiltz, "A Modular
              Analysis of the Fujisaki-Okamoto Transformation", Springer
              International Publishing, Lecture Notes in Computer
              Science pp. 341-371, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-70500-2_12,
              ISBN ["9783319704999", "9783319705002"], 2017,
              <https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70500-2_12>.

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2119>.




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   [RFC8174]  Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
              2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
              May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8174>.

   [TLS13]    Rescorla, E., "The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol
              Version 1.3", RFC 8446, DOI 10.17487/RFC8446, August 2018,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8446>.

8.2.  Informative References

   [AVIRAM]   Nimrod Aviram, Benjamin Dowling, Ilan Komargodski, Kenny
              Paterson, Eyal Ronen, and Eylon Yogev, "[TLS] Combining
              Secrets in Hybrid Key Exchange in TLS 1.3", 1 September
              2021, <https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/tls/
              F4SVeL2xbGPaPB2GW_GkBbD_a5M/>.

   [BCNS15]   Bos, J., Costello, C., Naehrig, M., and D. Stebila, "Post-
              Quantum Key Exchange for the TLS Protocol from the Ring
              Learning with Errors Problem", IEEE, 2015 IEEE Symposium
              on Security and Privacy pp. 553-570,
              DOI 10.1109/sp.2015.40, May 2015,
              <https://doi.org/10.1109/sp.2015.40>.

   [BERNSTEIN]
              "Post-Quantum Cryptography", Springer Berlin Heidelberg,
              DOI 10.1007/978-3-540-88702-7, ISBN ["9783540887010",
              "9783540887027"], 2009,
              <https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-88702-7>.

   [BINDEL]   Bindel, N., Brendel, J., Fischlin, M., Goncalves, B., and
              D. Stebila, "Hybrid Key Encapsulation Mechanisms and
              Authenticated Key Exchange", Springer International
              Publishing, Lecture Notes in Computer Science pp. 206-226,
              DOI 10.1007/978-3-030-25510-7_12, ISBN ["9783030255091",
              "9783030255107"], 2019,
              <https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25510-7_12>.

   [CAMPAGNA] Campagna, M. and E. Crockett, "Hybrid Post-Quantum Key
              Encapsulation Methods (PQ KEM) for Transport Layer
              Security 1.2 (TLS)", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft,
              draft-campagna-tls-bike-sike-hybrid-07, 2 September 2021,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-campagna-tls-
              bike-sike-hybrid-07>.

   [CECPQ1]   Braithwaite, M., "Experimenting with Post-Quantum
              Cryptography", 7 July 2016,
              <https://security.googleblog.com/2016/07/experimenting-
              with-post-quantum.html>.



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   [CECPQ2]   Langley, A., "CECPQ2", 12 December 2018,
              <https://www.imperialviolet.org/2018/12/12/cecpq2.html>.

   [DODIS]    Dodis, Y. and J. Katz, "Chosen-Ciphertext Security of
              Multiple Encryption", Springer Berlin Heidelberg, Lecture
              Notes in Computer Science pp. 188-209,
              DOI 10.1007/978-3-540-30576-7_11, ISBN ["9783540245735",
              "9783540305767"], 2005,
              <https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-30576-7_11>.

   [DOWLING]  Dowling, B., Fischlin, M., Günther, F., and D. Stebila, "A
              Cryptographic Analysis of the TLS 1.3 Handshake Protocol",
              Springer Science and Business Media LLC, Journal of
              Cryptology vol. 34, no. 4, DOI 10.1007/s00145-021-09384-1,
              July 2021, <https://doi.org/10.1007/s00145-021-09384-1>.

   [ECDHE-MLKEM]
              Kwiatkowski, K., Kampanakis, P., Westerbaan, B., and D.
              Stebila, "Post-quantum hybrid ECDHE-MLKEM Key Agreement
              for TLSv1.3", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-
              kwiatkowski-tls-ecdhe-mlkem-03, 24 December 2024,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-kwiatkowski-
              tls-ecdhe-mlkem-03>.

   [ETSI]     Campagna, M., Ed. and others, "Quantum safe cryptography
              and security: An introduction, benefits, enablers and
              challengers", ETSI White Paper No. 8 , June 2015,
              <https://www.etsi.org/images/files/ETSIWhitePapers/
              QuantumSafeWhitepaper.pdf>.

   [EVEN]     Even, S. and O. Goldreich, "On the Power of Cascade
              Ciphers", Springer US, Advances in Cryptology pp. 43-50,
              DOI 10.1007/978-1-4684-4730-9_4, ISBN ["9781468447323",
              "9781468447309"], 1984,
              <https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-4730-9_4>.

   [EXTERN-PSK]
              Housley, R., "TLS 1.3 Extension for Certificate-Based
              Authentication with an External Pre-Shared Key", RFC 8773,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8773, March 2020,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8773>.

   [FLUHRER]  Fluhrer, S., "Cryptanalysis of ring-LWE based key exchange
              with key share reuse", Cryptology ePrint Archive, Report
              2016/085 , January 2016,
              <https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/085>.





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   [FRODO]    Bos, J., Costello, C., Ducas, L., Mironov, I., Naehrig,
              M., Nikolaenko, V., Raghunathan, A., and D. Stebila,
              "Frodo: Take off the Ring! Practical, Quantum-Secure Key
              Exchange from LWE", ACM, Proceedings of the 2016 ACM
              SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security,
              DOI 10.1145/2976749.2978425, October 2016,
              <https://doi.org/10.1145/2976749.2978425>.

   [GIACON]   Giacon, F., Heuer, F., and B. Poettering, "KEM Combiners",
              Springer International Publishing, Lecture Notes in
              Computer Science pp. 190-218,
              DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-76578-5_7, ISBN ["9783319765778",
              "9783319765785"], 2018,
              <https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76578-5_7>.

   [HARNIK]   Harnik, D., Kilian, J., Naor, M., Reingold, O., and A.
              Rosen, "On Robust Combiners for Oblivious Transfer and
              Other Primitives", Springer Berlin Heidelberg, Lecture
              Notes in Computer Science pp. 96-113,
              DOI 10.1007/11426639_6, ISBN ["9783540259107",
              "9783540320555"], 2005,
              <https://doi.org/10.1007/11426639_6>.

   [HPKE]     Barnes, R., Bhargavan, K., Lipp, B., and C. Wood, "Hybrid
              Public Key Encryption", RFC 9180, DOI 10.17487/RFC9180,
              February 2022, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9180>.

   [IANATLS]  Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, "Transport Layer
              Security (TLS) Parameters - TLS Supported Groups", n.d.,
              <https://www.iana.org/assignments/tls-parameters/tls-
              parameters.xhtml#tls-parameters-8>.

   [IKE-HYBRID]
              Tjhai, C., Tomlinson, M., grbartle@cisco.com, Fluhrer, S.,
              Van Geest, D., Garcia-Morchon, O., and V. Smyslov,
              "Framework to Integrate Post-quantum Key Exchanges into
              Internet Key Exchange Protocol Version 2 (IKEv2)", Work in
              Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-tjhai-ipsecme-hybrid-qske-
              ikev2-04, 9 July 2019,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-tjhai-
              ipsecme-hybrid-qske-ikev2-04>.

   [IKE-PSK]  Fluhrer, S., Kampanakis, P., McGrew, D., and V. Smyslov,
              "Mixing Preshared Keys in the Internet Key Exchange
              Protocol Version 2 (IKEv2) for Post-quantum Security",
              RFC 8784, DOI 10.17487/RFC8784, June 2020,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8784>.




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   [KATZ]     Katz, J. and Y. Lindell, "Introduction to Modern
              Cryptography, Third Edition", CRC Press , 2021.

   [KIEFER]   Kiefer, F. and K. Kwiatkowski, "Hybrid ECDHE-SIDH Key
              Exchange for TLS", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft,
              draft-kiefer-tls-ecdhe-sidh-00, 5 November 2018,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-kiefer-tls-
              ecdhe-sidh-00>.

   [LANGLEY]  Langley, A., "Post-quantum confidentiality for TLS", 11
              April 2018, <https://www.imperialviolet.org/2018/04/11/
              pqconftls.html>.

   [LUCKY13]  Al Fardan, N. and K. Paterson, "Lucky Thirteen: Breaking
              the TLS and DTLS Record Protocols", IEEE, 2013 IEEE
              Symposium on Security and Privacy pp. 526-540,
              DOI 10.1109/sp.2013.42, May 2013,
              <https://doi.org/10.1109/sp.2013.42>.

   [NIELSEN]  Nielsen, M. A. and I. L. Chuang, "Quantum Computation and
              Quantum Information", Cambridge University Press , 2000.

   [NIST]     National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST),
              "Post-Quantum Cryptography", n.d.,
              <https://www.nist.gov/pqcrypto>.

   [NIST-FIPS-203]
              "Module-lattice-based key-encapsulation mechanism
              standard", National Institute of Standards and Technology
              (U.S.), DOI 10.6028/nist.fips.203, August 2024,
              <https://doi.org/10.6028/nist.fips.203>.

   [NIST-SP-800-135]
              Dang, Q., "Recommendation for existing application-
              specific key derivation functions", National Institute of
              Standards and Technology, DOI 10.6028/nist.sp.800-135r1,
              2011, <https://doi.org/10.6028/nist.sp.800-135r1>.

   [NIST-SP-800-56C]
              Barker, E., Chen, L., and R. Davis, "Recommendation for
              Key-Derivation Methods in Key-Establishment Schemes",
              National Institute of Standards and Technology,
              DOI 10.6028/nist.sp.800-56cr2, August 2020,
              <https://doi.org/10.6028/nist.sp.800-56cr2>.

   [OQS-102]  Open Quantum Safe Project, "OQS-OpenSSL-1-0-2_stable",
              November 2018, <https://github.com/open-quantum-
              safe/openssl/tree/OQS-OpenSSL_1_0_2-stable>.



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   [OQS-111]  Open Quantum Safe Project, "OQS-OpenSSL-1-1-1_stable",
              January 2022, <https://github.com/open-quantum-
              safe/openssl/tree/OQS-OpenSSL_1_1_1-stable>.

   [OQS-PROV] Open Quantum Safe Project, "OQS Provider for OpenSSL 3",
              July 2023,
              <https://github.com/open-quantum-safe/oqs-provider/>.

   [PQUIP-TERM]
              Driscoll, F., Parsons, M., and B. Hale, "Terminology for
              Post-Quantum Traditional Hybrid Schemes", RFC 9794,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC9794, June 2025,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9794>.

   [PST]      Paquin, C., Stebila, D., and G. Tamvada, "Benchmarking
              Post-quantum Cryptography in TLS", Springer International
              Publishing, Lecture Notes in Computer Science pp. 72-91,
              DOI 10.1007/978-3-030-44223-1_5, ISBN ["9783030442224",
              "9783030442231"], 2020,
              <https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44223-1_5>.

   [RACCOON]  Merget, R., Brinkmann, M., Aviram, N., Somorovsky, J.,
              Mittmann, J., and J. Schwenk, "Raccoon Attack: Finding and
              Exploiting Most-Significant-Bit-Oracles in TLS-DH(E)",
              September 2020, <https://raccoon-attack.com/>.

   [S2N]      Amazon Web Services, "Post-quantum TLS now supported in
              AWS KMS", 4 November 2019,
              <https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/post-quantum-tls-
              now-supported-in-aws-kms/>.

   [SCHANCK]  Schanck, J. M. and D. Stebila, "A Transport Layer Security
              (TLS) Extension For Establishing An Additional Shared
              Secret", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-schanck-
              tls-additional-keyshare-00, 17 April 2017,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-schanck-tls-
              additional-keyshare-00>.

   [WHYTE12]  Schanck, J. M., Whyte, W., and Z. Zhang, "Quantum-Safe
              Hybrid (QSH) Ciphersuite for Transport Layer Security
              (TLS) version 1.2", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft,
              draft-whyte-qsh-tls12-02, 22 July 2016,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-whyte-qsh-
              tls12-02>.

   [WHYTE13]  Whyte, W., Zhang, Z., Fluhrer, S., and O. Garcia-Morchon,
              "Quantum-Safe Hybrid (QSH) Key Exchange for Transport
              Layer Security (TLS) version 1.3", Work in Progress,



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              Internet-Draft, draft-whyte-qsh-tls13-06, 3 October 2017,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-whyte-qsh-
              tls13-06>.

   [XMSS]     Huelsing, A., Butin, D., Gazdag, S., Rijneveld, J., and A.
              Mohaisen, "XMSS: eXtended Merkle Signature Scheme",
              RFC 8391, DOI 10.17487/RFC8391, May 2018,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8391>.

   [ZHANG]    Zhang, R., Hanaoka, G., Shikata, J., and H. Imai, "On the
              Security of Multiple Encryption or CCA-security+CCA-
              security=CCA-security?", Springer Berlin Heidelberg,
              Lecture Notes in Computer Science pp. 360-374,
              DOI 10.1007/978-3-540-24632-9_26, ISBN ["9783540210184",
              "9783540246329"], 2004,
              <https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-24632-9_26>.

Appendix A.  Related work

   Quantum computing and post-quantum cryptography in general are
   outside the scope of this document.  For a general introduction to
   quantum computing, see a standard textbook such as [NIELSEN].  For an
   overview of post-quantum cryptography as of 2009, see [BERNSTEIN];
   while not containing more recent advances, it still provides a
   helpful introduction.  For the current status of the NIST Post-
   Quantum Cryptography Standardization Project, see [NIST].  For
   additional perspectives on the general transition from traditional to
   post-quantum cryptography, see for example [ETSI], among others.

   There have been several Internet-Drafts describing mechanisms for
   embedding post-quantum and/or hybrid key exchange in TLS:

   *  Internet-Drafts for TLS 1.2: [WHYTE12], [CAMPAGNA]

   *  Internet-Drafts for TLS 1.3: [KIEFER], [SCHANCK], [WHYTE13]

   There have been several prototype implementations for post-quantum
   and/or hybrid key exchange in TLS:

   *  Experimental implementations in TLS 1.2: [BCNS15], [CECPQ1],
      [FRODO], [OQS-102], [S2N]

   *  Experimental implementations in TLS 1.3: [CECPQ2], [OQS-111],
      [OQS-PROV], [PST]

   These experimental implementations have taken an ad hoc approach and
   not attempted to implement one of the drafts listed above.




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   Unrelated to post-quantum but still related to the issue of combining
   multiple types of keying material in TLS is the use of pre-shared
   keys, especially the recent TLS working group document on including
   an external pre-shared key [EXTERN-PSK].

   Considering other IETF standards, there is work on post-quantum
   preshared keys in IKEv2 [IKE-PSK] and a framework for hybrid key
   exchange in IKEv2 [IKE-HYBRID].  The XMSS hash-based signature scheme
   has been published as an informational RFC by the IRTF [XMSS].

   In the academic literature, [EVEN] initiated the study of combining
   multiple symmetric encryption schemes; [ZHANG], [DODIS], and [HARNIK]
   examined combining multiple public key encryption schemes, and
   [HARNIK] coined the term "robust combiner" to refer to a compiler
   that constructs a hybrid scheme from individual schemes while
   preserving security properties.  [GIACON] and [BINDEL] examined
   combining multiple key encapsulation mechanisms.

Authors' Addresses

   Douglas Stebila
   University of Waterloo
   Email: dstebila@uwaterloo.ca


   Scott Fluhrer
   Cisco Systems
   Email: sfluhrer@cisco.com


   Shay Gueron
   University of Haifa and Meta
   Email: shay.gueron@gmail.com


















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