Cryptanalysis of the original McEliece cryptosystem.


Anne Canteaut

INRIA, projet CODES
BP 105
78153 Le Chesnay Cedex, France
Anne.Canteaut@inria.fr

Nicolas Sendrier
INRIA, projet CODES
BP 105
78153 Le Chesnay Cedex, France
Nicolas.Sendrier@inria.fr

In Advances in Cryptology - ASIACRYPT'98 , LNCS 1514, pages 187-199
Springer-Verlag, 1998.


Abstract

The class of public-key cryptosystems based on error-correcting codes is one of the few alternatives to the common algorithms based on number theory. We here present an attack against these systems which actually consists of a new probabilistic algorithm for finding minimum-weight words in any large linear code. This new attack notably points out that McEliece cipher with its original parameters does not provide a sufficient security level.