A Novel Processor Architecture for McEliece Cryptosystem and FPGA Platforms

McEliece scheme represents a code-based public-key cryptosystem. So far, this cryptosystem was not employed because of efficiency questions regarding performance and communication overhead. This paper presents a novel processor architecture as a high-performance platform to execute key generation, encryption and decryption according to this cryptosystem. A prototype of this processor is realized on Virtex-5 FPGA and tested via a software API. A comparison with a similar software solution highlights the performance advantage of the proposed hardware solution.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: ASAP
• Authors: Abdulhadi Shoufan, Thorsten Wink, H. Gregor Molter, Sorin A. Huss, Falko Strenzke
• Keywords: ASAP 2009, Code-based Public-key Cryptosystem, Computer Science, Questions Regarding Performance, Similar Software Solution