CRYPTANALYSIS OF MCELIECE PUBLIC-KEY CRYPTOSYSTEM

An approach is proposed for the cryptanalysis of the well-known version of McEliece's public-key cryptosystem that is based on a new iterative optimization algorithm for decoding an arbitrary linear code. The algorithm provides guaranteed correction of all error patterns with Hamming weight less than d/2, where d is the minimum distance of the code, and has time complexity about O(n3) where n is the block length. The approach is illustrated by the cryptanalysis of McEliece's system when a (63, 36) binary code with d = 11 is the underlying linear code.