Cryptology ePrint Archive: Report 2007/149

Towards Generating Secure Keys for Braid Cryptography

Ki Hyoung Ko and Jang Won Lee and Tony Thomas

Abstract: Braid cryptosystem was proposed in CRYPTO 2000 as an alternate public-key cryptosystem. The security of this system is based upon the conjugacy problem in braid groups. Since then, there have been several attempts to break the braid cryptosystem by solving the conjugacy problem in braid groups. In this paper, we first survey all the major attacks on the braid cryptosystem and conclude that the attacks were successful because the current ways of random key generation almost always result in weaker instances of the conjugacy problem. We then propose several alternate ways of generating hard instances of the conjugacy problem for use braid cryptography.

Category / Keywords: foundations / braid group, conjugacy problem, secure key

Date: received 24 Apr 2007

Contact author: knot at knot kaist ac kr

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Version: 20070425:081426 (All versions of this report)

Short URL: ia.cr/2007/149

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