Quantum McEliece public-key cryptosystem

Abstract

The McEliece cryptosystem is one of the best-known (classical) public-key cryptosystems, which is based on algebraic coding theory. In this paper, we present a quantum analogue of the classical McEliece cryptosystem. Our quantum McEliece public-key cryptosystem is based on the theory of stabilizer codes and has the key generation, encryption and decryption algorithms similar to those in the classical McEliece cryptosystem. We present an explicit construction of the quantum McEliece public-key cryptosystem using Calderbank-Shor-Steane codes based on generalized Reed-Solomon codes. We examine the security of our quantum McEliece cryptosystem and compare it with alternative systems.