An efficient structural attack on NIST submission DAGS

TL;DR

This paper introduces a fast key recovery attack targeting a specific class of code-based encryption schemes, successfully compromising the NIST DAGS submission by exploiting structural properties of quasi-dyadic alternant codes.

Contribution

It presents the first efficient attack on the DAGS scheme, revealing vulnerabilities in its code structure that were previously unexploited.

Findings

Successfully breaks DAGS encryption scheme

Demonstrates vulnerability of quasi-dyadic alternant codes

Provides insights for designing more secure code-based cryptography

Abstract

We present an efficient key recovery attack on code based encryption schemes using some quasi-dyadic alternant codes with extension degree 2. This attack permits to break the proposal DAGS recently submitted to NIST.