McNie: A code-based public-key cryptosystem

TL;DR

The paper introduces McNie, a new code-based public-key cryptosystem combining McEliece and Niederreiter schemes, enhanced with rank-metric codes for improved security against structural attacks.

Contribution

It proposes a hybrid cryptosystem, McNie, with a novel public key masking technique and the application of rank-metric codes to strengthen security.

Findings

Security based on syndrome decoding problem

Enhanced resistance to structural attacks

Incorporation of rank-metric codes

Abstract

In this paper, we suggest a code-based public key encryption scheme, called McNie. McNie is a hybrid version of the McEliece and Niederreiter cryptosystems and its security is reduced to the hard problem of syndrome decoding. The public key involves a random generator matrix which is also used to mask the code used in the secret key. This makes the system safer against known structural attacks. In particular, we apply rank-metric codes to McNie.