Publick-key cryptography using
error-correcting codes
Meeting Time: Sept. 21, 2010, 2:00-2:50pm
Abstract:
Until modern times, all cryptographic systems shared a
limitation: Secure communication across an insecure channel
required that communicating parties first share a key to the
system via a secure channel. In 1976, Diffie and Hellman
introduced the idea of a public-key cryptographic system (PKC),
a system that eliminated the need for a secure channel by having
separate encryption and decryption keys. Within a couple of
years, McEliece developed a PKC that used error-correcting codes
and the difficulty of general linear decoding to achieve a
secure system. In this talk we'll discuss McEliece's PKC and its
derivatives.