Short expressions of permutations as products and cryptanalysis of the Algebraic Eraser

TL;DR

This paper introduces heuristic algorithms from probabilistic group theory that efficiently break the Algebraic Eraser cryptosystem by extracting shared keys, demonstrating vulnerabilities for large permutation groups.

Contribution

It provides the first practical algorithms for expressing permutations as products of random permutations, revealing potential weaknesses in the Algebraic Eraser scheme.

Findings

Algorithms succeed for all tested security parameters

Expressions of permutations are of length O(n^2 log n)

Experimental results show small constants in estimations

Abstract

On March 2004, Anshel, Anshel, Goldfeld, and Lemieux introduced the \emph{Algebraic Eraser} scheme for key agreement over an insecure channel, using a novel hybrid of infinite and finite noncommutative groups. They also introduced the \emph{Colored Burau Key Agreement Protocol (CBKAP)}, a concrete realization of this scheme. We present general, efficient heuristic algorithms, which extract the shared key out of the public information provided by CBKAP. These algorithms are, according to heuristic reasoning and according to massive experiments, successful for all sizes of the security parameters, assuming that the keys are chosen with standard distributions. Our methods come from probabilistic group theory (permutation group actions and expander graphs). In particular, we provide a simple algorithm for finding short expressions of permutations in $S_n$, as products of given random permutations. Heuristically, our algorithm gives expressions of length $O(n^2\log n)$, in time and space $O(n^3)$. Moreover, this is provable from \emph{the Minimal Cycle Conjecture}, a simply stated hypothesis concerning the uniform distribution on $S_n$. Experiments show that the constants in these estimations are small. This is the first practical algorithm for this problem for $n\ge 256$. Remark: \emph{Algebraic Eraser} is a trademark of SecureRF. The variant of CBKAP actually implemented by SecureRF uses proprietary distributions, and thus our results do not imply its vulnerability. See also arXiv:abs/12020598