ML-DSA

ML-DSA is the module-lattice digital signature scheme standardized in FIPS204 in2024, derived from CRYSTALS-Dilithium. Key generation creates a public verification key and a secret signing key. Signing combines a sampled masking vector with a message-derived challenge; bounds and rejection sampling prevent unsuitable responses from revealing the secret. Verification reconstructs the commitment information and checks the challenge and response bounds.^[ref]

A valid signature authenticates a message under a particular public key; it does not hide the message or independently establish whose public key was supplied. The standardized parameter sets ML-DSA-44,65 and87 have different key/signature sizes and security targets. Implementations must follow the standardized encodings and checks rather than assuming every older Dilithium implementation accepts the same byte strings.