Open AccessCryptanalysis of a Key Exchange Protocol Based on Commuting Matrices
Author(s) -
Jia Jianwei,
Liu Jinhui,
Zhang Huanguo
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
chinese journal of electronics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.267
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 2075-5597
pISSN - 1022-4653
DOI - 10.1049/cje.2017.08.013
Subject(s) - cryptanalysis , key exchange , key (lock) , protocol (science) , computer science , theoretical computer science , computer security , cryptography , public key cryptography , medicine , encryption , alternative medicine , pathology
A key exchange protocol is considered unsafe. The scheme is based on a set of m commuting square singular matrices of dimension n x n over a finite field, and its security is claimed to rely on the hardness of the matrix version discrete logarithm problem. However, the proposal's design allows for a clean attack strategy. We show that the key exchange protocol is vulnerable to a linear algebra attack which only requires polynomial time to obtain the equivalent keys for all given public keys. We conduct a detailed analysis on the attack method and provide some improved suggestions on the key exchange protocol based on commuting matrices.