A new code-based digital signature based on the McEliece cryptosystem

Abstract

Digital signature schemes are used for the authentication and verification of signatures. The Courtois–Finiasz–Sendrier (CFS) digital signature is a well-known code-based digital signature scheme based on the Niederreiter cryptosystem. However, it is not widely used due to the computation time of the signing algorithm. Most code-based digital signature schemes are based on the Niederreiter cryptosystem. This paper proposes a new code-based digital signature that is based on the McEliece cryptosystem. Key generation, signing, and verification algorithms are presented. The key generation algorithm constructs a public key using random inverse matrices. The signing algorithm has lower complexity and requires less computation time than the CFS scheme to sign a document. The verification algorithm is able to detect forgeries. It is shown that the proposed scheme is secure against public key structural attacks.