Status: active laboratory · Docker · reproducible

Engineering laboratories
for post-quantum cryptography.

PQC-Labs collects reproducible experiments evaluating how NIST-standardized post-quantum algorithms are being integrated into real-world software infrastructure: SSH, TLS, VPN and more — each with benchmarks, a Docker environment and full technical documentation.

View the organization on GitHub Explore repositories
01

Laboratory objectives

The goal isn't to implement new cryptographic algorithms, but to study how the standards already published by NIST are being adopted in software we already use.

ADOPTION

Evaluate the adoption of NIST post-quantum standards in existing software.

INFRASTRUCTURE

Build reproducible, Docker-based laboratory environments.

PERFORMANCE

Benchmark the performance impact of PQC-enabled software.

INTEROPERABILITY

Study interoperability between different implementations.

DOCUMENTATION

Produce technical documentation useful for both engineers and researchers.

02

Engineering principles

Every experiment follows the same methodology, so that any engineer can reproduce a published result using only the repository's contents.

Reproducible environments
Infrastructure as code
Version-controlled experiments
Complete technical documentation
Automated execution
Repeatable benchmarks
Open-source tooling
03

Repository structure

Two repositories are currently active, plus a roadmap of additional laboratories that will progressively cover the rest of the PQC ecosystem.

RepositoryDescriptionStatus
pqc-openssh Native Post-Quantum OpenSSH laboratories and benchmarks Active
pqc-openssl Reproducible OpenSSL laboratory: native PQC support, hybrid cryptography and interoperability Active
Planned repositories
RepositoryPurpose
pqc-liboqsExperiments using the liboqs library
pqc-oqs-providerOpenSSL OQS Provider integration
pqc-tlsTLS 1.3 with Post-Quantum Key Exchange
pqc-wireguardWireGuard and PQC integration
pqc-vpnVPN technologies using PQC
pqc-benchmarksCross-platform performance benchmarks
pqc-pythonPython implementations and examples
pqc-dockerShared Docker laboratory images
pqc-notesResearch notes and references
04

Current research

Two active research lines are currently running in parallel: native Post-Quantum support in OpenSSH, and in OpenSSL.

OpenSSH

→ github.com/PQC-labs/pqc-openssh
Current experiments
  • Docker laboratory creation
  • Building OpenSSH from source
  • Native ML-KEM validation
  • Hybrid key exchange validation
  • Performance benchmarking of key exchange algorithms

Next steps

Planned future work
  • SSH packet analysis
  • Wireshark dissectors
  • CPU profiling
  • Memory profiling
  • Large-scale benchmarks
  • Cross-version interoperability

OpenSSL

→ github.com/PQC-labs/pqc-openssl
Completed experiments
  • 001 — OpenSSL PQC baseline: build OpenSSL 3.5 from source and verify native PQC support
  • 002 — ML-KEM key generation and ASN.1 analysis
  • 003 — ML-KEM encapsulation and decapsulation lifecycle

Next steps

Planned future work
  • 004 — ML-DSA key generation
  • 005 — ML-DSA signatures
  • 006 — X.509 certificates with ML-DSA
  • Hybrid TLS 1.3
  • OpenSSL s_server / s_client
  • OpenSSH integration
05

Laboratory design

Each repository follows a common structure, and every experiment documents its objective, background, environment, methodology, execution, results and conclusions.

Repository
│
├── experiments/
│     ├── 001-...
│     ├── 002-...
│     ├── 003-...
│     └── ...
│
├── docker/
├── docs/
└── scripts/
  • Objective
  • Background
  • Environment
  • Methodology
  • Execution
  • Results
  • Conclusions
06

Laboratory technologies

Currently in use

OpenSSH OpenSSL ML-KEM (FIPS 203) SNTRUP761 Docker Ubuntu Python Bash Git Wireshark tcpdump
07

Why this project?

The transition toward post-quantum cryptography is one of the largest changes currently taking place in applied cryptography.

The standards are already available, but practical deployment guidance is still limited. The purpose of PQC-Labs is to provide practical, reproducible engineering experiments that help understand how these technologies behave in real-world environments.