A note on a Code-Based Signature Scheme

Abstract

In this work, we exploit a serious security flaw in a code-based signature scheme from a 2019 work by Liu, Yang, Han and Wang. They adapt the McEliece cryptosystem to obtain a new scheme and, on top of this, they design an efficient digital signature. We show that the new encryption scheme based on McEliece, even if it has longer public keys, is not more secure than the standard one. Moreover, the choice of parameters for the signature leads to a significant performance improvement, but it introduces a vulnerability in the protocol.