Goodbye to John Napier and Hello to Robert McEliece

Many of our public key methods are based on discrete logarithms and which build on the theories created by the John Napier. Bitcoin, Tor, smart cards, Wif-fi, and many other applications use discrete logarithms. But these methods, and other public key methods, are at risk from quantum computers. One contender is the McEliece Cryptography method, and which has reached the final round for the NIST competition for PCQ (Post Quantum Cryptography):

In a lesson for any modern researcher, in just two pages, Robert McEliece, in 1978, outlined a public key encryption method based on Algebraic Coding — now known as the McEliece Cryptography method [paper]. It is an asymmetric encryption method (with a public key and a private key), and, at the time, looked to be a serious contender for a trapdoor method. Unfortunately, RSA became the King of the Hill, and the McEliece method was pushed to the end of the queue for designers.

It has basically drifted for nearly 40 years. But, as an era of quantum computers is dawning, it is now being reconsidered, as it is seen to be immune to attacks using Shor’s algorithm [here].