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In cryptography, the Unbalanced Oil and Vinegar (UOV) scheme is a modified version of the Oil and Vinegar scheme designed by J. Patarin. Both are digital signature schemes. They belong to the group of multivariate cryptography. The security of this signature scheme is based on an NP-hard mathematical problem. To create and validate signatures a minimal quadratic equations system must be solved. Solving m equations with n variables is an NP-hard problem, which means the problem is almost certainly difficult to solve efficiently in the worst case, even when using a quantum computer. While the problem is easy if m is either much much larger or much much smaller than n, importantly for cryptographic purposes, the problem is thought to be difficult in the average case when m and n are nearly equal, even when using a quantum computer. As a result, a number of signature schemes have been devised based on multivariate equations with the goal of achieving quantum resistant signatures.