On the complexity of the Rank Syndrome Decoding problem

Abstract

In this paper we propose two new generic attacks on the Rank Syndrome Decoding (RSD) problem Let $C$ be a random $[n,k]$ rank code over $GF(q^m)$ and let $y=x+e$ be a received word such that $x \in C$ and the $Rank(e)=r$. The first attack is combinatorial and permits to recover an error $e$ of rank weight $r$ in $min(O((n-k)^3m^3q^{r\lfloor\frac{km}{n}\rfloor}, O((n-k)^3m^3q^{(r-1)\lfloor\frac{(k+1)m}{n}\rfloor}))$ operations on $GF(q)$. This attack dramatically improves on previous attack by introducing the length $n$ of the code in the exponent of the complexity, which was not the case in previous generic attacks. which can be considered The second attack is based on a algebraic attacks: based on the theory of $q$-polynomials introduced by Ore we propose a new algebraic setting for the RSD problem that permits to consider equations and unknowns in the extension field $GF(q^m)$ rather than in $GF(q)$ as it is usually the case. We consider two approaches to solve the problem in this new setting. Linearization technics show that if $n \ge (k+1)(r+1)-1$ the RSD problem can be solved in polynomial time, more generally we prove that if $\lceil \frac{(r+1)(k+1)-(n+1)}{r} \rceil \le k$, the problem can be solved with an average complexity $O(r^3k^3q^{r\lceil \frac{(r+1)(k+1)-(n+1)}{r} \rceil})$. We also consider solving with \grob bases for which which we discuss theoretical complexity, we also consider consider hybrid solving with \grob bases on practical parameters. As an example of application we use our new attacks on all proposed recent cryptosystems which reparation the GPT cryptosystem, we break all examples of published proposed parameters, some parameters are broken in less than 1 s in certain cases.