Squirrels is a post-quantum digital signature scheme submitted to NIST’s “Additional Post-Quantum Signature Schemes” call. It was designed by Thomas Espitau, Guilhem Niot, Chao Sun, and Mehdi Tibouchi. It uses the GPV hash-and-sign paradigm and is instantiated over unstructured co-cyclic integer lattices. Its positioning is closer to a cryptographic algorithm candidate than a ready-made enterprise cybersecurity product.
In terms of protection, Squirrels mainly provides quantum-resistant digital signatures for use cases such as identity authentication, message integrity, and non-repudiation. A key feature is that it avoids relying on lattices with algebraic structure, instead using unstructured lattices in exchange for more conservative long-term security confidence. The material also emphasizes that its five parameter sets precisely match NIST security levels, and that signatures are generated through lattice Gaussian sampling with the goal of avoiding statistical leakage from signatures. In terms of performance, signature sizes range from 1019B to 2025B, while public keys range from 666kB to 2721kB. In single-core tests on a Ryzen Pro 7 5850U, signing throughput is approximately 177.9 to 601.6 operations/second, while verification is approximately 3937 to 13099 operations/second.
The collected material does not include any commercial pricing, payment methods, or licensing model information. Deployment is also not presented as SaaS, a gateway, an endpoint agent, or an enterprise platform. Instead, it provides a submission package, specification PDF, and Known-Answer Tests, indicating that it is more suitable as material for algorithm implementation, testing, and evaluation. In terms of integration, the text only shows specifications and test vectors, with no mention of APIs, SDKs, TLS/PKI integration, key management systems, or alerting platform capabilities.
Its strengths are conservative security assumptions, parameter sets covering NIST security levels, relatively compact signature sizes, and the availability of test resources for reproducible experiments. The drawbacks are also clear: the use of unstructured lattices leads to large public keys, key generation is relatively slow, and keygen for the highest parameter set reaches 351 seconds. At the same time, there is no management console, alerting, compliance certification, service support, or enterprise deployment guidance, so it remains some distance from being a production-grade security product.
Squirrels is suitable for post-quantum cryptography researchers, standardization evaluators, cryptographic library developers, and security teams assessing long-term quantum-resistant signature options. It is not suitable for companies looking directly for a commercial cybersecurity protection platform. The material does not provide information on access from China, so this is unknown; there is also no payment information. Falcon, Dilithium, and other NIST post-quantum signature schemes can be used as alternatives or comparison targets for evaluation.
⚠ This review is compiled from public sources and does not constitute a purchase recommendation. Verify all facts on the vendor's official site. Verify on squirrels-pqc.org official site.
squirrels-pqc.org is an Unknown Cybersecurity provider. TG4G tracks its product information, an overall rating of 6.0/10, and a China-accessibility score of China direct-connect friendly. Click "Visit Official Site" to reach squirrels-pqc.org directly.