Error-correcting pairs for a public-key cryptosystem

TL;DR

This paper explores the use of error-correcting pairs in code-based cryptography, proposing a new class of codes with t-error-correcting pairs for the McEliece cryptosystem, and analyzing their security and distinguishability.

Contribution

It introduces the class of codes with t-error-correcting pairs for the McEliece cryptosystem and examines the difficulty of identifying such codes.

Findings

Proposed a new class of codes with t-ECP for cryptography.

Provided distinguishers for subclasses of these codes.

Analyzed the security implications of t-ECP in cryptosystems.

Abstract

Code-based cryptography is an interesting alternative to classic number-theory PKC since it is conjectured to be secure against quantum computer attacks. Many families of codes have been proposed for these cryptosystems, one of the main requirements is having high performance t-bounded decoding algorithms which in the case of having high an error-correcting pair is achieved. In this article the class of codes with a t-ECP is proposed for the McEliece cryptosystem. The hardness of retrieving the t-ECP for a given code is considered. As a first step distinguishers of several subclasses are given.