Skip to content

pqblocks-core

Post-quantum hybrid cryptography core SDK with C shared libraries and policy enforcement.

Install from GitHub Area Status Python Licence Source

At a glance
Area PQ cryptography
Import import pqblocks_core
Command line library only
Version 0.1.0 (Alpha)
Python >=3.11
Native dependency liboqs
Repository PQBlocks/hybrid-sdk
Licence Apache-2.0

What is pqblocks-core?

Post-quantum hybrid cryptography core SDK with C shared libraries and policy enforcement.

Use it for native, high-performance hybrid key encapsulation (ML-KEM-768 + X25519) and composite signatures (ML-DSA-65 + Ed25519) with C-speed bindings and policy governance.

Standards implemented: NIST FIPS 203 (ML-KEM), NIST FIPS 204 (ML-DSA), RFC 7748 (X25519), RFC 8032 (Ed25519), RFC 5869 (HKDF), and draft-ietf-lamps-pq-composite-sigs.

Install

pip install git+https://github.com/PQBlocks/hybrid-sdk

uv add git+https://github.com/PQBlocks/hybrid-sdk

PyPI release staged

pqblocks-core installs from its GitHub repository while the PyPI release is staged. The import name and API are identical either way.

Native dependency: liboqs

The post-quantum primitives come from liboqs (Open Quantum Safe). The package README explains how the library is located: install notes.

Quickstart

Executed, not just written

This is the quickstart from the package README. It was run against the package source when this page was generated.

quickstart.py
import ctypes, os
import pqblocks_core

# Locate the native hybrid KEM library
lib_path = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(pqblocks_core.__file__), "lib", "libpqblocks_kem.so")
lib = ctypes.CDLL(lib_path)
lib.PQBLOCKS_KEM_X25519_MLKEM768_new.restype = ctypes.c_void_p

# Initialize hybrid KEM handle (ML-KEM-768 + X25519)
kem = lib.PQBLOCKS_KEM_X25519_MLKEM768_new()
assert kem is not None
print("PQBlocks hybrid core initialized successfully.")

Examples

Runnable scripts in the repository:

Documentation and evidence

Every PQBlocks package ships the same evidence set, so each claim can be checked against tests, sources and measurements.

  • Overview

    What it does, install, usage and API.

  • For AI agents

    Correct imports, pitfalls and rules for coding assistants.

  • Security notes

    What it protects, hostile input, constant-time and audit status.

  • Testing

    Test suites, coverage, vectors and what is not covered.

  • Benchmarks

    Measured performance, including where it loses.

  • Evidence

    Primary sources and the method-to-code map.

  • Verification report

    Self-verification results, defects found and limits.

  • Use cases

    Worked scenarios and when to pick something else.

  • Changelog

    Every release and what changed.

  • pqblocks-files: Hybrid post-quantum file encryption: ML-KEM-768 plus X25519 key encapsulation with chunked ChaCha20-Poly1305 in the…
  • pqblocks-jose: Post-quantum hybrid JOSE library supporting ML-KEM and ML-DSA JWE and JWS tokens.
  • pqblocks-primitives: Production-ready integrated post-quantum cryptographic primitives (ML-KEM, ML-DSA, SLH-DSA, and hybrid schemes).