Sometimes in Cybersecurity, Boring is Good
Correcting Errors Is Good
Sometimes in cybersecurity, boring is good, and so writes T.Lange for the submission of the McEliece Post Quantum Crypto (PQC) submission:
And while researchers gush about lattice methods and their learning with errors and learning with rounding, and about the beauty of isogenies, the good old boring McEliece method plods on, and does “what it says on the tin”.
And so the classic McEliece method still has a chance to be the PCQ method of choice, as it is one of the three finalists in the NIST competition for public key encryption/key exchange:
Overall, though, the McEliece method has a bit of a PR problem, and one of its weaknesses is that while there are many YouTube videos explaining lattice methods and isogenies, unfortunately, the McEliece method has been a bit forgotten about. Perhaps, it’s because it crosses over from data communications to cryptography, that there is a little bit of a misunderstanding? But, I…