Quantum-Resistant medical data protection scheme integrating ML-KEM and blockchain
Received date: 2026-03-16
Revised date: 2026-05-06
Online published: 2026-06-01
Copyright
In today's healthcare environments, protecting sensitive medical data—such as electronic health records and medical images—has become increasingly critical due to the inherent limitations of traditional encryption systems and the rapidly emerging threat of quantum computing attacks. To effectively address these pressing vulnerabilities, this paper proposes a post-quantum medical data protection scheme integrating a Module-Lattice-Based Key-Encapsulation Mechanism (ML-KEM) with decentralized Blockchain technology. The proposed scheme employs ML-KEM to facilitate a quantum-resistant key exchange process and introduces an HKDF-based hierarchical key derivation mechanism combined with AES-256 to achieve parallel hybrid encryption. To eliminate single-point storage vulnerabilities, a dual-layer architecture is adopted: the data layer applies Reed-Solomon erasure coding for efficient fault-tolerant sharding, while the control layer applies Shamir's Secret Sharing to the ML-KEM encapsulation ciphertext, with all shares distributed across the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) for decentralized storage. Furthermore, the system utilizes Blockchain technology alongside smart contracts to enforce tamper-proof access control and provide transparent log recording for all user activities. Comprehensive security analysis and simulation experiments demonstrate that the proposed scheme successfully withstands both classical and quantum cryptographic attacks, thereby guaranteeing data confidentiality and integrity. In addition, the system maintains a relatively low computational overhead during daily operations. Finally, this research improves the fault tolerance and security of distributed medical storage systems while enhancing the practical deployability and long-term scalability of the proposed scheme.
Key words: Medical Data; Post-Quantum Cryptography; Blockchain; Secret Sharing
Wu Wei , Li Zhonghui , Yang Yang . Quantum-Resistant medical data protection scheme integrating ML-KEM and blockchain[J]. Journal of Cybersecurity, 2026 . DOI: 10.20172/j.issn.2097-3136.260530
表 1 比较门限参数K与N对恢复时间及准确率的影响Table 1 Impact of K and N on the restoration time and accuracy |
| N | 平均恢复时间/s | 恢复准确率/% | |
| 2 | 5 | 100 | |
| 3 | 5 | 100 | |
| 4 | 5 | 100 | |
| 5 | 8 | 100 | |
| 6 | 8 | 100 | |
| 7 | 8 | 100 |
表 2 ML-KEM算法参数集配置Table 2 ML-KEM Algorithm Parameter Configuration |
| 维度 | 多项式向 量维数 | 模数 | 噪声参数 | 噪声参数 | 压缩参数 | |
| ML-KEM-512 | 256 | 2 | 3 | 2 | (10,4) | |
| ML-KEM-768 | 256 | 3 | 2 | 2 | (10,4) | |
| ML-KEM- | 256 | 4 | 2 | 2 | (11,5) |
表 4 智能合约性能指标Table 4 Smart Contract Performance Metrics |
| 并发用户数 | 平均注册延迟/s | 平均Gas消耗( | 交易确认延迟/ms |
| 100 | 0.031 | 3.9 | 340 |
| 200 | 0.034 | 4.0 | 357 |
| 400 | 0.046 | 4.2 | 372 |
| 600 | 0.050 | 4.3 | 388 |
| 800 | 0.053 | 4.4 | 401 |
| 0.058 | 4.6 | 417 |
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