Folding Alternant and Goppa Codes with Non-Trivial Automorphism Groups

The main practical limitation of the McEliece public-key encryption scheme is probably the size of its key. A famous trend to overcome this issue is to focus on subclasses of alternant/Goppa codes with a non trivial automorphism group. Such codes display then symmetries allowing compact parity-check or generator matrices. For instance, a key-reduction is obtained by taking quasi-cyclic (QC) or quasi-dyadic (QD) alternant/Goppa codes. We show that the use of such symmetric alternant/Goppa codes in cryptography introduces a fundamental weakness. It is indeed possible to reduce the key-recovery on the original symmetric public-code to the key-recovery on a (much) smaller code that has not anymore symmetries. This result is obtained thanks to a new operation on codes called folding that exploits the knowledge of the automorphism group. This operation consists in adding the coordinates of codewords which belong to the same orbit under the action of the automorphism group. The advantage is twofold: the reduction factor can be as large as the size of the orbits, and it preserves a fundamental property: folding the dual of an alternant (resp. Goppa) code provides the dual of an alternant (resp. Goppa) code. A key point is to show that all the existing constructions of alternant/Goppa codes with symmetries follow a common principal of taking codes whose support is globally invariant under the action of affine transformations (by building upon prior works of T. Berger and A. D{\"{u}}r). This enables not only to present a unified view but also to generalize the construction of QC, QD and even quasi-monoidic (QM) Goppa codes. All in all, our results can be harnessed to boost up any key-recovery attack on McEliece systems based on symmetric alternant or Goppa codes, and in particular algebraic attacks.Comment: 19 page

Étude de la sécurité de certaines clés compactes pour le schéma de McEliece utilisant des codes géométriques

In 1978, McEliece introduce a new public key encryption scheme coming from errors correcting codes theory. The idea is to use an error correcting code whose structure would be hidden, making it impossible to decode a message for anyone who do not know a specific decoding algorithm for the chosen code.The McEliece scheme has some advantages, encryption and decryption are very fast and it is a good candidate for public-key cryptography in the context of quantum computer. The main constraint is that the public key is too large compared to other actual public-key cryptosystems. In this context, we propose to study the using of some quasi-cyclic or quasi-dyadic codes.In this thesis, the two families of interest are: the family of alternant codes and the family of subfield subcode of algebraic geometry codes. We can constructquasi-cyclic alternant codes using an automorphism which acts on the support and the multiplier of the code. In order to estimate the securtiy of these QC codes we study the {\em invariant code}. This invariant code is a smaller code derived from the public key. Actually the invariant code is exactly the subcode of codewords fixed by the automorphism $\sigma$. We show that it is possible to reduce the key-recovery problem on the original quasi-cyclic code to the same problem on the invariant code. This is also true in the case of QC algebraic geometry codes. This result permits us to propose a security analysis of QC codes coming from the Hermitian curve. Moreover, we propose compact key for the McEliece scheme using subfield subcode of AG codes on the Hermitian curve.The case of quasi-dyadic alternant code is also studied. Using the invariant code, with the {\em Schur product} and the {\em conductor} of two codes, we show weaknesses on the scheme using QD alternant codes with extension degree 2. In the case of the submission DAGS, proposed in the context of NIST competition, an attack exploiting these weakness permits to recover the secret key in few minutes for some proposed parameters.En 1978, McEliece introduit un schéma de chiffrement à clé publique issu de la théorie des codes correcteurs d’erreurs. L’idée du schéma de McEliece est d’utiliser un code correcteur dont la structure est masquée, rendant le décodage de ce code difficile pour toute personne ne connaissant pas cette structure. Le principal défaut de ce schéma est la taille de la clé publique. Dans ce contexte, on se propose d'étudier l'utilisation de codes dont on connaît une représentation compacte, en particulier le cas de codes quais-cyclique ou quasi-dyadique. Les deux familles de codes qui nous intéressent dans cette thèse sont: la famille des codes alternants et celle des sous--codes sur un sous--corps de codes géométriques. En faisant agir un automorphisme $\sigma$ sur le support et le multiplier des codes alternants, on sait qu'il est possible de construire des codes alternants quasi-cycliques. On se propose alors d'estimer la sécurité de tels codes à l'aide du \textit{code invariant}. Ce sous--code du code public est constitué des mots du code strictement invariant par l'automorphisme $\sigma$. On montre ici que la sécurité des codes alternants quasi-cyclique se réduit à la sécurité du code invariant. Cela est aussi valable pour les sous--codes sur un sous--corps de codes géométriques quasi-cycliques. Ce résultat nous permet de proposer une analyse de la sécurité de codes quasi-cycliques construit sur la courbe Hermitienne. En utilisant cette analyse nous proposons des clés compactes pour la schéma de McEliece utilisant des sous-codes sur un sous-corps de codes géométriques construits sur la courbe Hermitienne. Le cas des codes alternants quasi-dyadiques est aussi en partie étudié. En utilisant le code invariant, ainsi que le \textit{produit de Schur} et le \textit{conducteur} de deux codes, nous avons pu mettre en évidence une attaque sur le schéma de McEliece utilisant des codes alternants quasi-dyadique de degré $2$. Cette attaque s'applique notamment au schéma proposé dans la soumission DAGS, proposé dans le contexte de l'appel du NIST pour la cryptographie post-quantique

Polynomial time attack on high rate random alternant codes

A long standing open question is whether the distinguisher of high rate alternant codes or Goppa codes \cite{FGOPT11} can be turned into an algorithm recovering the algebraic structure of such codes from the mere knowledge of an arbitrary generator matrix of it. This would allow to break the McEliece scheme as soon as the code rate is large enough and would break all instances of the CFS signature scheme. We give for the first time a positive answer for this problem when the code is {\em a generic alternant code} and when the code field size $q$ is small : $q \in \{2,3\}$ and for {\em all} regime of other parameters for which the aforementioned distinguisher works. This breakthrough has been obtained by two different ingredients : (i) a way of using code shortening and the component-wise product of codes to derive from the original alternant code a sequence of alternant codes of decreasing degree up to getting an alternant code of degree $3$ (with a multiplier and support related to those of the original alternant code); (ii) an original Gr\"obner basis approach which takes into account the non standard constraints on the multiplier and support of an alternant code which recovers in polynomial time the relevant algebraic structure of an alternant code of degree $3$ from the mere knowledge of a basis for it

An Algebraic Attack Against McEliece-like Cryptosystems Based on BCH Codes

We present an algebraic attack on a McEliece-like scheme based on BCH codes (BCH-McEliece), where the Goppa code is replaced by a suitably permuted BCH code. Our attack continues the line of work devising attacks against McEliece-like schemes with Goppa-like codes, with the goal of getting a better understanding of why Goppa codes are so intractable. Our starting point is the work of Faugère, Perret and Portzamparc (Asiacrypt 2014). We take their algebraic model and adapt and improve their attack algorithm so that it can handle BCH-McEliece. We implement the attack and exhibit a parameter range where our attack is practical while generic attacks suggest cryptographic security

Finite Fields: Theory and Applications

Finite fields are the focal point of many interesting geometric, algorithmic and combinatorial problems. The workshop was devoted to progress on these questions, with an eye also on the important applications of finite field techniques in cryptography, error correcting codes, and random number generation

McEliece in the world of Escher

We present a new family of linear binary codes of length n and dimension k accompanied with a fast list decoding algorithm that can correct up to n/2 errors in a bounded channel with an error density $\rho$. The decisional problem of decoding random codes using these generalized error sets is NP-complete. Next we use the properties of these codes to design both an encryption scheme and a signature scheme. Although in the open literature there have been several proposals how to produce digital signatures from the McEliece public key scheme, as far as we know, this is the first public key scheme based on codes where signatures are produced in a straightforward manner from the decryption procedure of the scheme. The security analysis of our scheme have four parts: 1. An extensive list of attacks using the Information Set Decoding techniques adopted for our codes; 2. An analysis of the cost of a distinguishing attack based on rank attacks on the generator matrix of the code or on its dual code; 3. An analysis of the cost of cheap distinguishing attacks on the generator matrix of the code or on its dual code that have expensive list-decoding properties; 4. We interpret our scheme as multivariate quadratic system and discuss difficulties of solving that system using algebraic approaches such as Gröbner bases. Based on this security analysis we suggest some concrete parameters for the security levels in the range of $2^{80} - 2^{128}$. An additional feature of the decryption process is that it admits massive and trivial parallelization that could potentially make our scheme in hardware as fast as the symmetric crypto primitives

Scalable and Transparent Proofs over All Large Fields, via Elliptic Curves (ECFFT part II)

Concretely efficient interactive oracle proofs (IOPs) are of interest due to their applications to scaling blockchains, their minimal security assumptions, and their potential future-proof resistance to quantum attacks. Scalable IOPs, in which prover time scales quasilinearly with the computation size and verifier time scales poly-logarithmically with it, have been known to exist thus far only over a set of finite fields of negligible density, namely, over FFT-friendly fields that contain a sub-group of size $2^k$. Our main result is to show that scalable IOPs can be constructed over any sufficiently large finite field, of size that is at least quadratic in the length of computation whose integrity is proved by the IOP. This result has practical applications as well, because it reduces the proving and verification complexity of cryptographic statements that are naturally stated over pre-defined finite fields which are not FFT-friendly . Prior state-of-the-art scalable IOPs relied heavily on arithmetization via univariate polynomials and Reed--Solomon codes over FFT-friendly fields. To prove our main result and extend scalability to all large finite fields, we generalize the prior techniques and use new algebraic geometry codes evaluated on sub-groups of elliptic curves (elliptic curve codes). We also show a new arithmetization scheme that uses the rich and well-understood group structure of elliptic curves to reduce statements of computational integrity to other statements about the proximity of functions evaluated on the elliptic curve to the new family of elliptic curve codes. This paper continues our recent work that used elliptic curves and their subgroups to create FFT-based algorithms for polynomial manipulation over generic finite fields. However, our new IOP constructions force us to use new codes (ones that are not based on polynomials), and this poses a new set of challenges involving the more restricted automorphism group of these codes, and the constraints of Riemann-Roch spaces of strictly positive genus