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Comment by thayne

11 hours ago

> you have to certify OpenSSH running on a particular OS on particular hardware

Right, but if you use the certified version of OpenSSH, it will only allow you to use certain algorithms.

> ML-KEM is NIST approved and AFAIK NIST is on record saying that hybrid KEMs are fine. My understanding is therefore that it would be possible for mlkem768x25519-sha256 (supported by OpenSSH) to be certifie

ML-KEM is allowed, and SHA-256 is allowed. But AFAIK, x25519 is not, although finding a definitive list is a lot more difficult for 140-3 than it was for 140-3, so I'm not positive. So I don't think (but IANAFA as well) mlkem768x25519-sha256 would be allowed, although I would expect a hybrid that used ECDSA instead of x25519 would probably be ok. But again, IANAFA, and would be happy if I was wrong.

My understanding is that a hybrid using x25519 as the classical KEM is fine on the basis that the security of the construction rests (for the purposes of approval) on ML-KEM and can't be made worse by the other part of the hybrid algorithm.

I don't have a definitive reference for this though.