Performance Evaluation of Classic McEliece Post Quantum Cryptography

Classic cryptography algorithms have become more fragile and vulnerable to modern attacks. The advancement of quantum computers and its attacks are now a big threat to the classic cryptography which uses hard mathematical calculation for security, that leads to the commence of the post quantum cryptography which are resistant to the quantum attacks. National Institute of Standardization and Technology is in process of standardizing the post quantum cryptography algorithm based on different factors like encapsulation, decapsulation time, keypair generation time, speed etc. In this paper we will discuss about the performance evaluation of post quantum cryptography algorithms especially the power consumption of Classic McEliece algorithm and its different variation which comes under code-based cryptography. The evaluated results are tabulated and categorized based on the different principles used and the factors leading to major power consumption is identified.

I. Introduction

The field of cryptography is seeing lot of developments in regular interval of time and results of those developments are the algorithms like Rivest Shamir Adleman (RSA), Diffie-Hellman, and elliptic curve cryptography. The algorithms which are widely used now deploy mathematical calculations that are difficult to compute to ensure security. The next huge step in the field of cryptography is quantum computers which uses quantum gates and quantum bits to perform large computation in less time. This quantum computer is now the bigger threat to the already present cryptographic algorithms. The problems that are hard now are prime integer factorization, discrete logarithm, elliptic curve discrete logarithm, etc., which can be broken with the help of quantum computers. Shor's algorithm states that the prime factorization problem can be done in polynomial time with the help of quantum computer [1]. Grover's algorithm states that integer factorization is done in half the usual time with help of quantum computer [2]. This was all theoretical until the first working quantum computer was demonstrated. All the hard mathematical calculation that builds up the classic cryptography algorithms has become fragile now and vulnerable to the quantum computation. The next advancement was Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) which uses quantum entanglement principle and superposition to transfer key between two entities. Quantum computer uses qubit instead of traditional binary bit [3]. QKD has also become less reliable and practical application has lot of