A Distinguisher-Based Attack of a Homomorphic Encryption Scheme Relying on Reed-Solomon Codes

Bogdanov and Lee suggested a homomorphic public-key encryption scheme based on error correcting codes. The underlying public code is a modified Reed-Solomon code obtained from inserting a zero submatrix in the Vandermonde generating matrix defining it. The columns that define this submatrix are kept secret and form a set $L$. We give here a distinguisher that detects if one or several columns belong to $L$ or not. This distinguisher is obtained by considering the code generated by component-wise products of codewords of the public code (the so called "square code"). This operation is applied to punctured versions of this square code obtained by picking a subset $I$ of the whole set of columns. It turns out that the dimension of the punctured square code is directly related to the cardinality of the intersection of $I$ with $L$. This allows an attack which recovers the full set $L$ and which can then decrypt any ciphertext.Comment: 11 page

Structural Properties of Twisted Reed-Solomon Codes with Applications to Cryptography

We present a generalisation of Twisted Reed-Solomon codes containing a new large class of MDS codes. We prove that the code class contains a large subfamily that is closed under duality. Furthermore, we study the Schur squares of the new codes and show that their dimension is often large. Using these structural properties, we single out a subfamily of the new codes which could be considered for code-based cryptography: These codes resist some existing structural attacks for Reed-Solomon-like codes, i.e. methods for retrieving the code parameters from an obfuscated generator matrix.Comment: 5 pages, accepted at: IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory 201

Chaves mais pequenas para criptossistemas de McEliece usando codificadores convolucionais

The arrival of the quantum computing era is a real threat to the confidentiality and integrity of digital communications. So, it is urgent to develop alternative cryptographic techniques that are resilient to quantum computing. This is the goal of pos-quantum cryptography. The code-based cryptosystem called Classical McEliece Cryptosystem remains one of the most promising postquantum alternatives. However, the main drawback of this system is that the public key is much larger than in the other alternatives. In this thesis we study the algebraic properties of this type of cryptosystems and present a new variant that uses a convolutional encoder to mask the so-called Generalized Reed- Solomon code. We conduct a cryptanalysis of this new variant to show that high levels of security can be achieved using significant smaller keys than in the existing variants of the McEliece scheme. We illustrate the advantages of the proposed cryptosystem by presenting several practical examples.A chegada da era da computação quântica é uma ameaça real à confidencialidade e integridade das comunicações digitais. É, por isso, urgente desenvolver técnicas criptográficas alternativas que sejam resilientes à computação quântica. Este é o objetivo da criptografia pós-quântica. O Criptossistema de McEliece continua a ser uma das alternativas pós-quânticas mais promissora, contudo, a sua principal desvantagem é o tamanho da chave pública, uma vez que é muito maior do que o das outras alternativas. Nesta tese estudamos as propriedades algébricas deste tipo de criptossistemas e apresentamos uma nova variante que usa um codificador convolucional para mascarar o código de Generalized Reed-Solomon. Conduzimos uma criptoanálise dessa nova variante para mostrar que altos níveis de segurança podem ser alcançados usando uma chave significativamente menor do que as variantes existentes do esquema de McEliece. Ilustramos, assim, as vantagens do criptossistema proposto apresentando vários exemplos práticos.Programa Doutoral em Matemátic