Classic McEliece

The first code-based public-key cryptosystem was introduced in 1978 by McEliece. The public key specifies a random binary Goppa code. A ciphertext is a codeword plus random errors. The private key allows efficient decoding: extracting the codeword from the ciphertext, identifying and removing the errors.The McEliece system was designed to be one-way (OW-CPA), meaning that an attacker cannot efficiently find the codeword from a ciphertext and public key, when the codeword is chosen randomly. The security level of the McEliece system has remained remarkably stable, despite dozens of attack papers over 40 years. The original McEliece parameters were designed for only 264 security, but the system easily scales up to "overkill" parameters that provide ample security margin against advances in computer technology, including quantum computers.The McEliece system has prompted a tremendous amount of followup work. Some of this work improves efficiency while clearly preserving security: this includes a "dual" PKE proposed by Niederreiter, software speedups, and hardware speedups.Furthermore, it is now well known how to efficiently convert an OW-CPA PKE into a KEM that is IND-CCA2 secure against all ROM attacks. This conversion is tight, preserving the security level, under two assumptions that are satisfied by the McEliece PKE: first, the PKE is deterministic (i.e., decryption recovers all randomness that was used); second, the PKE has no decryption failures for valid ciphertexts. Even better, very recent work suggests the possibility of achieving similar tightness for the broader class of QROM attacks. The risk that a hash-function-specific attack could be faster than a ROM or QROM attack is addressed by the standard practice of selecting a well-studied, high-security, "unstructured" hash function