Paper 2026/2716
Key Recovery Against RLCE via the GIJS Distinguisher
Abstract
We present an experimental cryptanalysis of the RLCE cryptosystem at the heretofore secure $w=n-k$ parameter regime. Our attack relies crucially on the recent Ghoshal--Ishai--Jain--Sun (GIJS) distinguisher The attack shortens the public key at random positions, runs the GIJS distinguisher with \emph{every} column as hold-out, and uses this distinguisher to identify twin pairs based on how they appear across trials. Three pairs so identified are unmixed by a root-finding cascade, and Sidelnikov--Shestakov on the resulting $k \times (k+3)$ pure matrix recovers the key. We experimentally verify our attack by breaking the ID-0 (128-bit) in 30.5 core-hours (about 3 hours of wall time) on a standard higher-end laptop.
Metadata
- Available format(s)
-
PDF
- Category
- Attacks and cryptanalysis
- Publication info
- Preprint.
- Keywords
- cryptanalysis
- Contact author(s)
- jacobmas @ gmail com
- History
- 2026-11-04: approved
- 2026-11-01: received
- See all versions
- Short URL
- https://ia.cr/2026/2716
- License
-
CC BY
BibTeX
@misc{cryptoeprint:2026/2716,
author = {Jacob Alperin-Sheriff},
title = {Key Recovery Against {RLCE} via the {GIJS} Distinguisher},
howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2026/2716},
year = {2026},
url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2026/2716}
}
