Extended multivariate public key cryptosystems with secure encryption function

Abstract

Advances in quantum computers pose great threats on the currently used public key cryptographic algorithms such as RSA and ECC. As a promising candidate secure against attackers equipped with quantum computational power, multivariate public key cryptosystems (MPKCs) have attracted increasing attention in recently years. Unfortunately, the existing MPKCs can only be used as a multivariate signature scheme, and it remains unknown how to construct an efficient MPKC enabling secure encryption. Furthermore, some multivariate signature schemes have been shown insecure in recent years, and it is also not trivial to build MPKC which can serve as a secure signature scheme. By employing the basic MQ-trapdoors, this paper proposes a novel MPKC and shows how it can be used as a multivariate signature scheme and a multivariate encryption scheme, respectively. The goal is achieved by incorporating our new hash authentication techniques and some modification methods such as the Shamir’s minus method. Thorough analysis shows that our schemes are secure and efficient. Our MPKC gives a positive response to the challenges in multivariate public key cryptography.