A Closer Look at the Tropical Cryptography

TL;DR

This paper critically analyzes two recent tropical algebra-based public key exchange protocols, revealing a fast attack on one and implementation issues in the other, thereby questioning their security and practicality.

Contribution

It introduces a fast attack on the first protocol and demonstrates the second protocol's implementation flaws, providing new insights into tropical cryptography security.

Findings

Fast attack successfully compromises the first protocol

Second protocol cannot be properly implemented as described

Highlights vulnerabilities in tropical algebra-based cryptography

Abstract

We examine two public key exchange protocols proposed recently by Grigoriev and Shpilrain (arXiv:1811.06386), which use tropical algebra. We introduce a fast attack on the first protocol, and we show that the second protocol cannot be implemented as described.