International Association
for Cryptologic Research

In this work, we continue the analysis of the binding properties of implicitly-rejecting key-encapsulation mechanisms (KEMs) obtained via the Fujisaki-Okamoto (FO) transform. These binding properties, in earlier literature known under the term robustness, thwart attacks that can arise when using KEMs in larger protocols. Recently, Cremers et al. (ePrint'24) introduced a framework for binding notions, encompassing previously existing but also new ones. While implicitly-rejecting KEMs have been analyzed with respect to multiple of these notions, there are still several gaps. We complete the picture by providing positive and negative results for the remaining notions. Further, we show how to apply our results to the code-based KEMs BIKE and HQC, which are among the round-4 candidates in NISTs PQC standardization process. Through this, we close a second gap as our results finish the analysis of the binding notions for the NIST round-4 KEMs.