Using shifted conjugacy in braid-based cryptography

Conjugacy is not the only possible primitive for designing braid-based protocols. To illustrate this principle, we describe a Fiat--Shamir-style authentication protocol that be can be implemented using any binary operation that satisfies the left self-distributive law. Conjugation is an example of such an operation, but there are other examples, in particular the shifted conjugation on Artin's braid group B\_oo, and the finite Laver tables. In both cases, the underlying structures have a high combinatorial complexity, and they lead to difficult problems

Conjugacy in Artin groups and applications to the classification of surfaces

We show thatthe double reversing algorithm proposed by dehornoy for solving the word problem in the braid group can also be used to recognize the conjugates of powers of the generators in an Artin group of spherical type. The proof uses a characterization of these powers in terms of their fractional decomposition. This algorithm could have potential applications to braid-based cryptography; it also provides a fast method for testing a necessary condition in the classification of surfaces in algebraic geometry

On an authentication scheme based on the Root Problem in the braid group

Lal and Chaturvedi proposed two authentication schemes based on the difficulty of the Root Problem in the braid group. We point out that the first scheme is not really as secure as the Root Problem, and describe an efficient way to crack it. The attack works for any group.Comment: This paper has been withdrawn by the author. One of the claims is incorrect as written. We are working on correcting and generalizing it. This will be published in another pape