wolfSSL’s PKCS#7/CMS implementation has long produced and verified SignedData with the signature algorithms you’d expect — RSA and ECDSA. It now speaks post-quantum as well: PKCS#7 SignedData can be signed and verified using ML-DSA, the Module-Lattice-Based Digital Signature Algorithm standardized by NIST in FIPS 204 (formerly CRYSTALS-Dilithium). The encoding follows the conventions the IETF LAMPS working group has defined for using ML-DSA with the Cryptographic Message Syntax, so the messages wolfSSL produces are designed to interoperate cleanly with other implementations that adopt the same standard, across all three parameter sets (ML-DSA-44, ML-DSA-65, and ML-DSA-87).
PKCS#7/CMS SignedData is the format sitting underneath a lot of infrastructure that has to be trustworthy for a long time: signed firmware and software update packages, code signing, signed documents, S/MIME secure email, trusted timestamps, and signed manifests and SBOMs. These are exactly the places where a quantum-resistant signature matters early. A firmware image or a signed document produced today may still need to verify — and to resist forgery — a decade or more from now, well within the window in which a cryptographically relevant quantum computer could break classical signatures. Migrating the signing side of these workflows to ML-DSA now means the artifacts you ship today keep their integrity guarantees into the post-quantum era, without changing the container format your tooling already understands.
This matters most where wolfSSL lives. wolfSSL is built for embedded systems and resource-constrained devices, and secure firmware and update-package signing is precisely the kind of long-lived root of trust those devices depend on — often deployed in the field for many years with no easy way to swap out their trust anchors later. Bringing ML-DSA to PKCS#7 in a small-footprint, portable implementation lets even tightly constrained targets verify quantum-resistant signatures on the firmware and messages they receive, so the move to post-quantum reaches all the way down to the smallest devices rather than stopping at the server room.
Have a post-quantum or CNSA 2.0 requirement? Reach out at facts@wolfSSL.com or +1 425 245 8247.
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