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Cloudflare has enabled validation of NIST-standardized ML-DSA-44 post-quantum DNSSEC signatures on its 1.1.1.1 public resolver. Where an authenticated parent DS record advertises the algorithm, the resolver requires a valid ML-DSA-44 chain of trust rather than falling back to conventional signatures, protecting dual-signed migrations against downgrade attacks.
The rollout provides Internet-scale testing of major operational constraints: ML-DSA-44 signatures are about 2,420 bytes, often exceeding standard DNS-over-UDP payload limits and triggering truncated responses and TCP fallback. End-to-end post-quantum DNSSEC remains dependent on adoption across authoritative DNS operators, registrars, registries, TLDs, the DNS root, and other validating resolvers; Cloudflare has stated a goal of full post-quantum security by 2029.
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Cloudflare enabled validation of NIST-standardized ML-DSA-44 post-quantum DNSSEC signatures on its 1.1.1.1 public resolver. The resolver applies a stricter local policy requiring a valid ML-DSA-44 chain when an authenticated parent DS record advertises the algorithm, preventing fallback to a conventional signature alone.
IANA assigned ML-DSA-44 DNSSEC algorithm number 18 and listed its signing and validation status as MAY.
RFC 9210 reinforced TCP as a DNS best current practice, supporting the TCP fallback needed when ML-DSA-44 DNSSEC responses exceed UDP payload limits.
RFC 7766 made TCP support mandatory for general-purpose DNS implementations, establishing a transport requirement relevant to oversized post-quantum DNSSEC responses.
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Cloudflare has added post-quantum authentication to **Authenticated Origin Pulls** and **Custom Origin Trust Store**, enabling customers to use **ML-DSA** signatures for Cloudflare-to-origin TLS and build fully post-quantum-secure mutual TLS on that link. The company said the protection is effective only if organizations also remove trust in classical authentication paths to avoid downgrade attacks, and positioned the release as a key step toward its stated goal of full post-quantum security by 2029. Cloudflare also noted that post-quantum authentication for browser-facing WebPKI traffic will follow a different approach based on **Merkle Tree Certificates**. The rollout comes amid broader industry acceleration toward quantum-safe security. Cloudflare Radar has been tracking worldwide post-quantum encryption adoption, while Microsoft said the timeline for quantum risk is shifting and urged faster migration planning. Cloudflare said the new capability required changes across its Go-based control plane and **Pingora Origin** data plane, and disclosed that a **BoringSSL** upgrade triggered a June 10, 2026 incident when stricter `KeyUsage` enforcement caused compatibility problems before the issue was patched and resolved.
Jul 29, 2026
The U.S. government is accelerating post-quantum cryptography adoption across federal systems and the defense industrial base, with new executive and Defense Department directives setting milestones for agencies and contractors to support PQC by 2030 and use it by 2031. Reporting on the Pentagon’s strategy says the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program will be updated with quantum-resistant requirements, while broader federal policy frames a two-track quantum strategy that combines defensive migration with continued national quantum advancement. Officials and industry sources warn that many contractors remain unprepared, even as governments and security agencies increasingly cite **Harvest Now, Decrypt Later** as a current risk to long-lived sensitive data. At the same time, industry is arguing that organizations cannot delay deployment waiting for better algorithms, even as implementation flaws raise fresh concerns around today’s standards. Cloudflare said `ML-DSA`, standardized alongside `ML-KEM`, is imperfect but the most practical near-term signature option and remains central to its plan for full post-quantum security by 2029. Separate research coverage highlighted practical key-recovery attacks against buggy `ML-DSA` implementations, including failures involving nonce reuse and corrupted signing randomness, underscoring that migration urgency must be matched by rigorous engineering, testing, and protections against side-channel and randomness-leakage failures.
Jul 14, 2026
Let's Encrypt said it will use **Merkle Tree Certificates (MTCs)** as its preferred approach for post-quantum authentication on the public web, arguing that conventional post-quantum signatures such as `ML-DSA` would make standard TLS certificate chains too large for reliable internet-scale handshakes. The model batches certificate issuance under a single signed Merkle tree head and delivers compact inclusion proofs, reducing handshake overhead while making Certificate Transparency inherent to issuance. Let’s Encrypt said current subscribers do not need to take immediate action, but future ACME clients and related tooling will need updates as the ecosystem moves toward the new format. The move aligns Let’s Encrypt with broader work by **Google, Cloudflare, Chrome, DigiCert, and the IETF**, as browser and infrastructure vendors push for scalable post-quantum TLS ahead of government migration deadlines from the NSA, NIST, and the EU. Let’s Encrypt plans a staging environment for MTC issuance in late 2026 and a production-ready deployment in 2027, while continuing to track `ML-DSA` support for traditional X.509 use cases outside the browser ecosystem. It also said the more urgent near-term defense remains post-quantum encryption against harvest-now-decrypt-later threats, urging operators to enable hybrid key exchange such as: ```text X25519MLKEM768 ```
Jun 29, 2026