A Knapsack Type Public Key Cryptosystem Based On Arithmetic in Finite Fields (preliminary draft)

Abstract

We introduce a new knapsack type public key cryptosystem. The system is based on a novel application of arithmetic in finite fields, following a construction by Bose and Chowla. Appropriately choosing the parameters, we can control the density of the resulting knapsack. In particular, the density can be made high enough to foil “low density” attacks against our system. At the moment, we do not know of any attacks capable of “breaking” this system in a reasonable amount of time.