Abstract
Generic decoding of linear codes is the best known attack against most code-based cryptosystems. Understanding and measuring the complexity of the best decoding techniques is thus necessary to select secure parameters. We consider here the possibility that an attacker has access to many cryptograms and is satisfied by decrypting (i.e. decoding) only one of them. We show that, for the parameter range corresponding to the McEliece encryption scheme, a variant of Stern’s collision decoding can be adapted to gain a factor almost \(\sqrt{N}\) when N instances are given. If the attacker has access to an unlimited number of instances, we show that the attack complexity is significantly lower, in fact the number of security bits is divided by a number slightly smaller than 3/2 (but larger than 1). Finally we give indications on how to counter those attacks.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Augot, D., Finiasz, M., Gaborit, P., Manuel, S., Sendrier, N.: SHA-3 proposal: FSB. Submission to the SHA-3 NIST Competition (2008), http://www-rocq.inria.fr/secret/CBCrypto/index.php?pg=fsb
Augot, D., Finiasz, M., Sendrier, N.: A fast provably secure cryptographic hash function. Cryptology ePrint Archive, Report 2003/230 (2003), http://eprint.iacr.org/
Barg, A.: Complexity issues in coding theory. In: Pless, V., Huffman, W. (eds.) Handbook of Coding Theory, vol. I, ch. 7, pp. 649–754. North-Holland (1998)
Berlekamp, E., McEliece, R., van Tilborg, H.: On the inherent intractability of certain coding problems. IEEE Trans. on Information Theory 24(3) (May 1978)
Bernstein, D.J., Lange, T., Peters, C.: Attacking and Defending the Mceliece Cryptosystem. In: Buchmann, J., Ding, J. (eds.) PQCrypto 2008. LNCS, vol. 5299, pp. 31–46. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)
Bernstein, D.J., Lange, T., Peters, C.: Smaller Decoding Exponents: Ball-Collision Decoding. In: Rogaway, P. (ed.) CRYPTO 2011. LNCS, vol. 6841, pp. 743–760. Springer, Heidelberg (2011)
Bernstein, D.J., Lange, T., Peters, C., Schwabe, P.: Really Fast Syndrome-Based Hashing. In: Nitaj, A., Pointcheval, D. (eds.) AFRICACRYPT 2011. LNCS, vol. 6737, pp. 134–152. Springer, Heidelberg (2011)
Camion, P., Patarin, J.: The Knapsack Hash Function Proposed at Crypto’89 can be Broken. In: Davies, D.W. (ed.) EUROCRYPT 1991. LNCS, vol. 547, pp. 39–53. Springer, Heidelberg (1991)
Canteaut, A., Chabaud, F.: A new algorithm for finding minimum-weight words in a linear code: Application to McEliece’s cryptosystem and to narrow-sense BCH codes of length 511. IEEE Trans. on Information Theory 44(1), 367–378 (1998)
Coron, J.S., Joux, A.: Cryptanalysis of a provably secure cryptographic hash function. Cryptology ePrint Archive, Report 2004/013 (2004), http://eprint.iacr.org/
Courtois, N.T., Finiasz, M., Sendrier, N.: How to Achieve a McEliece-Based Digital Signature Scheme. In: Boyd, C. (ed.) ASIACRYPT 2001. LNCS, vol. 2248, pp. 157–174. Springer, Heidelberg (2001)
Dumer, I.: On minimum distance decoding of linear codes. In: Proc. 5th Joint Soviet-Swedish Int. Workshop Inform. Theory, Moscow, pp. 50–52 (1991)
Finiasz, M.: Parallel-CFS: Strengthening the CFS McEliece-Based Signature Scheme. In: Biryukov, A., Gong, G., Stinson, D.R. (eds.) SAC 2010. LNCS, vol. 6544, pp. 159–170. Springer, Heidelberg (2011)
Finiasz, M., Sendrier, N.: Security Bounds for the Design of Code-Based Cryptosystems. In: Matsui, M. (ed.) ASIACRYPT 2009. LNCS, vol. 5912, pp. 88–105. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)
Fischer, J.B., Stern, J.: An Efficient Pseudo-Random Generator Provably as Secure as Syndrome Decoding. In: Maurer, U.M. (ed.) EUROCRYPT 1996. LNCS, vol. 1070, pp. 245–255. Springer, Heidelberg (1996)
Gaborit, P., Girault, M.: Lightweight code-based identification and signature. In: IEEE Conference, ISIT 2007, pp. 191–195. IEEE, Nice (2007)
Gaborit, P., Laudaroux, C., Sendrier, N.: Synd: a very fast code-based stream cipher with a security reduction. In: IEEE Conference, ISIT 2007, pp. 186–190. IEEE, Nice (2007)
Johansson, T., Jönsson, F.: On the complexity of some cryptographic problems based on the general decoding problem. IEEE-IT 48(10), 2669–2678 (2002)
Lee, P.J., Brickell, E.F.: An Observation on the Security of McEliece’s Public-Key Cryptosystem. In: Günther, C.G. (ed.) EUROCRYPT 1988. LNCS, vol. 330, pp. 275–280. Springer, Heidelberg (1988)
Leon, J.: A probabilistic algorithm for computing minimum weights of large error-correcting codes. IEEE Trans. on Information Theory 34(5), 1354–1359 (1988)
McEliece, R.: A public-key cryptosystem based on algebraic coding theory. DSN Prog. Rep., Jet Prop. Lab., California Inst. Technol., Pasadena, CA pp. 114–116 (January 1978)
Niederreiter, H.: Knapsack-type cryptosystems and algebraic coding theory. Prob. Contr. Inform. Theory 15(2), 157–166 (1986)
Overbeck, R., Sendrier, N.: Code-based cryptography. In: Bernstein, D., Buchmann, J., Dahmen, E. (eds.) Post-Quantum Cryptography, pp. 95–145. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)
Peters, C.: Curves, Codes, and Cryptography. Ph.D. thesis, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven (2011)
Prange, E.: The use of information sets in decoding cyclic codes. IRE Transactions IT-8, S5–S9 (1962)
Saarinen, M.J.: Linearization Attacks against Syndrome Based Hashes. In: Srinathan, K., Rangan, C.P., Yung, M. (eds.) INDOCRYPT 2007. LNCS, vol. 4859, pp. 1–9. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)
Stern, J.: A Method for Finding Codewords of Small Weight. In: Wolfmann, J., Cohen, G. (eds.) Coding Theory 1988. LNCS, vol. 388, pp. 106–113. Springer, Heidelberg (1989)
Stern, J.: A New Identification Scheme Based on Syndrome Decoding. In: Stinson, D.R. (ed.) CRYPTO 1993. LNCS, vol. 773, pp. 13–21. Springer, Heidelberg (1994)
Véron, P.: Improved identification schemes based on error-correcting codes. AAECC 8(1), 57–69 (1997)
Wagner, D.: A Generalized Birthday Problem. In: Yung, M. (ed.) CRYPTO 2002. LNCS, vol. 2442, pp. 288–303. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Sendrier, N. (2011). Decoding One Out of Many. In: Yang, BY. (eds) Post-Quantum Cryptography. PQCrypto 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7071. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-25405-5_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-25405-5_4
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-25404-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-25405-5
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)