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BY-NC-ND 3.0 license Open Access Published by De Gruyter May 21, 2007

A Summary of McEliece-Type Cryptosystems and their Security

  • D. Engelbert , R. Overbeck and A. Schmidt

In this paper we give an overview of some of the cryptographic applications which were derived from the proposal of R. J. McEliece to use error correcting codes for cryptographic purposes. Code based cryptography is an interesting alternative to number theoretic cryptography. Many basic cryptographic functions like encryption, signing, hashing, etc. can be realized using code theoretic concepts.

In this paper we briefly show how to correct errors in transmitted data by employing Goppa codes and describe possible applications to public key cryptography.

The main focus of this paper is to provide detailed insight into the state of art of cryptanalysis of the McEliece cryptosystem and the effect on different cryptographic applications. We conclude, that for code based cryptography a public key of 88KB offers sufficient security for encryption, while we need a public key of at least 597KB for secure signing.

Published Online: 2007-05-21
Published in Print: 2007-04-01

Copyright 2007, Walter de Gruyter

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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