{
  "id": 12078872,
  "title": "Cloudflare Plans Public Certificate Authority to Issue Quantum-Safe TLS Certificates",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/05/cloudflare-plans-public-certificate-authority-to-issue-quantum-safe",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-10-05T05:05:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "InfoQ",
    "slug": "infoq",
    "url": "https://www.infoq.com/news/2026/10/postquatam-certificates/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Cloudflare announced its intention to establish a free public Certificate Authority, tasked with issuing quantum-resistant Transport Layer Security certificates. This move addresses a significant challenge in modern web infrastructure: transitioning away from classical public key cryptography to post-quantum security. Post-quantum key exchange algorithms have begun production, yet post-quantum authentication has lagged due to the size of quantum-resistant digital signatures. Cloudflare's approach combines standard X.509 issuance with Merkle Tree Certificates to offer backwards-compatible, low-latency quantum resistance.\n\nCurrent internet authentication relies heavily on classical asymmetric primitives like RSA and elliptic-curve cryptography. In a post-quantum environment, standards like ML-DSA and Falcon provide protection against attacks by Shor's algorithm. However, these quantum-resistant signatures and keys are significantly larger than classical ones. This enlargement would increase the size of cryptographic handshake data by about forty times, leading to issues such as TCP segmentation, packet loss on constrained networks, and extra round-trip times during the handshake phase. Additionally, Certificate Transparency logs would face severe strain due to the increased size of these signatures.\n\nTo mitigate this, Cloudflare's new public authority uses Merkle Tree Certificates, an alternative authentication model under development in the IETF PLANTS working group. This system groups certificate issuances into an append-only Merkle tree structure instead of signing each server certificate individually. This method logs an entry by inserting it into a tree, with the certificate consisting of an inclusion proof referencing a signed tree head. The CA signs only the root of the Merkle tree with a post-quantum signature, while individual leaf nodes use compact cryptographic hashes. This design reduces handshake payload sizes by transmitting only a truncated inclusion proof between the leaf node and a known tree head, or \"landmark,\" which clients can cache. Cloudflare implements this hybrid approach, providing clients with both traditional X.509 certificates and Merkle Tree Certificates. Modern clients that support Merkle Tree Certificate authentication receive the compact tree-based proof, while older clients continue using the standard X.509 chain. Initial production experiments in collaboration with Google Chrome's engineering team showed that this architecture maintains low handshake latency while ensuring full transparency. Mari Galicer, a Cloudflare representative, emphasized that logging is a prerequisite for issuance to prevent untracked certificates. For enterprises, adopting post-quantum transport security requires navigating significant architectural changes. Merkle Tree Certificates affect how certificate revocation and validity intervals operate, leading to shorter validity windows and shorter certificate lifespans aligned with industry trends. Cloudflare plans to open standard issuance at no cost to all web properties, aiming for broad public issuance by early 2027 to align with root store inclusions. As client-side ecosystems like Chrome's Quantum-resistant Root Store mature, infrastructure engineers must prepare for automated certificate managers, verify client-side cryptographic library compatibility, and adapt internal edge topologies for hybrid verification schemes.",
  "summary": "Error generating summary: { \"error\": { \"message\": \"You have no credits remaining. Add credits to continue using the API at https://platform.openai.com/settings/organization/billing/.\", \"type\": \"insufficient_quota\", \"param\": null, \"code\": \"credit_balance_exhausted\" } } By Olimpiu Pop",
  "key_points": [
    "Cloudflare plans to launch free public Certificate Authority for quantum-safe TLS certificates.",
    "Merkle Tree Certificates used to reduce handshake payload sizes and improve latency.",
    "Cloudflare's initiative aims for broad public issuance by early 2027."
  ],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}