ML-KEM + X-Wing Patches Posted For Linux To Help With Post-Quantum Security - Phoronix
Articles & Reviews
News Archive
Forums
Premium Ad-Free<br>Contact
Popular Categories
Close
Articles & Reviews
News Archive
Forums
Premium
Contact
Categories
Computers Display Drivers Graphics Cards Linux Gaming Memory Motherboards Processors Software Storage Operating Systems Peripherals
ML-KEM + X-Wing Patches Posted For Linux To Help With Post-Quantum Security
Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Security on 26 May 2026 at 03:00 AM EDT. 6 Comments
Linux cryptography expert Eric Biggers of Google posted a set of patches on Monday for providing proof-of-concept support for ML-KEM and X-Wing for post-quantum cryptography.
Patches cover ML-KEM for Module-Lattice-Based Key-Encapsulation Mechanism as a quantum-resistant cryptographic standard. Plus there is also X-Wing as a hybrid key-encapsulation mechanism based on X25519 and ML-KEM-768. This is part of getting the Linux kernel's security ready for an era of quantum computing in needing to strengthen cryptographic standards.
While posted as a proof-of-concept, Eric Biggers isn't planning on upstreaming the kernel patches until there are in-kernel users ready to go with this new functionality. Bigger explained in Monday's patch series:<br>"It is a proof-of-concept that won't be merged until there is an in-kernel user. Multiple people have been asking about this though, so I wanted to get ahead of the curve and provide something that people can experiment with if needed.
This series adds support for "post-quantum" (i.e. quantum-resistant) key encapsulation to the kernel's crypto library. Specifically this includes ML-KEM-768 and ML-KEM-1024, and the X-Wing hybrid KEM built on top of it. The ML-KEM functions are put in the CRYPTO_INTERNAL namespace, as they will be used only as a component of hybrid KEMs.
It's likely this will eventually be useful for at least one of the in-kernel users of classical key agreement schemes (currently NVMe authentication, Bluetooth, and WireGuard). However, the details of the upgrade to "post-quantum" will be up to the protocol authors in each case. I suggest that X-Wing be chosen when possible."
Those interested can see this patch series for this initial ML-KEM-768 / ML-KEM-1024 and X-Wing work for the Linux kernel.
6 Comments
Tweet
Linux AF_ALG Crypto Code Removing Zero-Copy Support Out Of Security Concerns<br>Dirty Frag Vulnerability Made Public Early: Root Privilege On All Distributions<br>Linux Out-Of-Bounds Access Fixed For Unprivileged Users With Specially Crafted Certs<br>AppArmor Enhancements Merged For Linux 7.0<br>Linux 7.0 Lands ML-DSA Quantum-Resistant Signature Support<br>CVE-2026-0915: GNU C Library Fixes A Security Issue Present Since 1996
Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.
FreeBSD Foundation Executive Director Tries Daily Driving FreeBSD On Laptop<br>AV2 Codec Looks Like It Will Be Officially Released Next Week<br>Linux Sound Subsystem Also Seeing Many Fixes Driven By AI/LLMs<br>Intel Introducing USB4STREAM Protocol For Linux - Opening Up Some Nifty Uses For USB4<br>Today's Linux Networking Fixes: "Craziness Continues With No End In Sight"<br>GNOME Commander 2.0 Released Following Rewrite In Rust & GTK4<br>Greg KH Calls For More Rust Linux Developers<br>HP Now Sponsoring The Linux Vendor Firmware Service / Fwupd
AlmaLinux 10.2 Released For Latest Community-Driven RHEL 10.2 Experience
Pavona Aims To Provide A Certification-Ready, Open-Source Silicon Ecosystem
NVIDIA 610.43.02 Linux Driver Released With Vulkan Improvements, DRM Color Pipeline API
Intel Working On pmtctl Tool For Linux In Dealing With Platform Telemetry Data
Btrfs Preps Huge Folios Support Ahead Of Linux 7.2
ML-KEM + X-Wing Patches Posted For Linux To Help With Post-Quantum Security
Meta's CacheLib Sees New Release After Two Year Hiatus For Helping With High DRAM Prices
Labwc 0.20 Wayland Compositor Released With Numerous New Features
Sway 1.12 Released With HDR Support On Vulkan Renderer, New Protocols
RADV Driver Lands Support For VK_KHR_shader_fma
Phoronix Premium allows ad-free access to the site, multi-page articles on a single page, and other features while supporting this site's continued operations.
NVIDIA Vera CPU Benchmarks: Olympus Cores Delivering The Best Performance Ever Seen On ARM
Linux Provides Better Performance With The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Over Windows 11
NVIDIA RTX PRO Blackwell Performance Delivering Excellent Linux Performance
Initial Benchmarks Of The SpacemiT K3 RVA23 RISC-V CPU With...