Surfshark adds ML-DSA authentication to make its WireGuard VPN fully post quantum

[Tracey49]

VPN provider Surfshark has added ML-DSA certificate authentication to its WireGuard implementation, The Quantum Insider reports. It already used ML-KEM for key exchange, so the company now says the protocol is fully post quantum. The feature is live on iOS and macOS, with other platforms to follow. ML-KEM and ML-DSA are two of the NIST standards finalised in 2024

Surfshark also compared 15 widely used apps and platforms to see where everyone else stands. Eight had adopted ML-KEM, but only two, Google Cloud KMS and AWS KMS, had deployed ML-DSA. Even there it is an optional signing feature that customers have to set up themselves. None of the consumer apps in the comparison used ML-DSA for certificate authentication

Apple and Microsoft get a mention too. Apple offers ML-DSA to developers and Microsoft has built it into Windows, but neither has switched it on in Safari, iMessage, Edge or Microsoft 365. That gap between having the capability and turning it on is common in security. Signatures are harder to roll out than key exchange because every certificate in the chain needs changing

Lead system engineer Karolis Kaciulis explained the reasoning. He said a fully post quantum secure VPN rests on three pillars, which are encryption, key exchange and authentication. He called authentication the forgotten step, and warned that without it a quantum computer could perform a session takeover by impersonating the server at the moment you connect. That is a fair point, although it only matters once a powerful enough quantum computer exists

It is worth noting the article is largely based on Surfshark's own press release, so the comparison is theirs. Even so, the technical move is real, and it is good to see a consumer VPN going further than the big platforms. Authentication attacks need a live quantum computer at the moment of connection, unlike harvest now, decrypt later. So the urgency is lower than for key exchange, but getting ahead of it costs little

Does post quantum support affect which VPN you choose? And why do you think the big platforms are slower on signatures than on key exchange?

Surfshark Adds ML-DSA Authentication to Post-Quantum WireGuardthequantuminsider.com