Paper 2011/367 Original: eprint.iacr.org/2011/367 ↗

Decoding One Out of Many

Abstract

Generic decoding of linear codes is the best known attack against most code-based cryptosystems. Understanding and measuring the complexity of the best decoding technique is thus necessary to select secure parameters. We consider here the possibility that an attacker has access to many cryptograms and is satisfied by decrypting (i.e.\ decoding) only one of them. We show that, in many cases of interest in cryptology, a variant of Stern's collision decoding can be adapted to gain a factor almost $\sqrt{N}$ when $N$ instances are given. If the attacker has access to an unlimited number of instances, we show that the attack complexity is significantly lower, in fact raised by a power slightly larger than $2/3$. Finally we give indications on how to counter those attacks.