Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

The Mceliece Cryptosystem As A Solution To The Post-Quantum Cryptographic Problem, Isaac Hanna

Senior Honors Theses

The ability to communicate securely across the internet is owing to the security of the RSA cryptosystem, among others. This cryptosystem relies on the difficulty of integer factorization to provide secure communication. Peter Shor’s quantum integer factorization algorithm threatens to upend this. A special case of the hidden subgroup problem, the algorithm provides an exponential speedup in the integer factorization problem, destroying RSA’s security. Robert McEliece’s cryptosystem has been proposed as an alternative. Based upon binary Goppa codes instead of integer factorization, his cryptosystem uses code scrambling and error introduction to hinder decrypting a message without the private key. This …