Abstract

The Chor-Rivest cryptosystem is a public key cryptosystem first proposed by MIT cryptographers Ben Zion Chor and Ronald Rivest [Chor84]. More recently Chor has imple mented the cryptosystem as part of his doctoral thesis [Chor85]. Derived from the knapsack problem, this cryptosystem differs from earlier knapsack public key systems in that computa tions to create the knapsack are done over finite algebraic fields. An interesting result of Bose and Chowla supplies a method of constructing higher densities than previously attain able [Bose62]. Not only does an increased information rate arise, but the new system so far is immune to the low density attacks levied against its predecessors, notably those of Lagarias- Odlyzko and Radziszowski-Kreher [Laga85, Radz86]. An implementation of this cryptosystem is really an instance of the general scheme, dis tinguished by fixing a pair of parameters, p and h , at the outset. These parameters then remain constant throughout the life of the implementation (which supports a community of users). Chor has implemented one such instance of his cryptosystem, where p =197 and h =24. This thesis aspires to extend Chor's work by admitting p and h as variable inputs at run time. In so doing, a cryptanalyst is afforded the means to mimic the action of arbitrary implementations. A high degree of success has been achieved with respect to this goal. There are only a few restrictions on the choice of parameters that may be selected. Unfortunately this general ity incurs a high cost in efficiency; up to thirty hours of (VAX1 1-780) processor time are needed to generate a single key pair in the desired range (p = 243 and h =18).

Library of Congress Subject Headings

Computers--Access control; Data protection

Publication Date

1986

Document Type

Thesis

Student Type

Graduate

Degree Name

Computer Science (MS)

Department, Program, or Center

Computer Science (GCCIS)

Advisor

Donald Kreher

Advisor/Committee Member

Stanislaw Radziszowski

Advisor/Committee Member

John Ellis

Campus

RIT – Main Campus

Plan Codes

COMPSCI-MS

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