International Association
for Cryptologic Research

The public key cryptosystems $MST_1$ and $MST_2$ make use of certain kinds of factorizations of finite groups. We show that generalizing such factorizations to infinite groups allows a uniform description of several proposed cryptographic primitives. In particular, a generalization of $MST_2$ can be regarded as a unifying framework for several suggested cryptosystems including the ElGamal public key system, a public key system based on braid groups and the MOR cryptosystem.

The public key cryptosystem $MST_1$ has been introduced in~\cite{MaStTr00}. Its security relies on the hardness of factoring with respect to wild logarithmic signatures. To identify `wild-like' logarithmic signatures, the criterion of being totally-non-transversal has been proposed. We give tame totally-non-transversal logarithmic signatures for the alternating and symmetric groups of degree $\ge 5$. Hence, basing a key generation procedure on the assumption that totally-non-transversal logarithmic signatures are `wild like' seems critical. We also discuss the problem of recognizing `weak' totally-non-transversal logarithmic signatures, and demonstrate that another proposed key generation procedure based on permutably transversal logarithmic signatures may produce weak keys.