International Association
for Cryptologic Research

As post-quantum cryptography transitions toward practical deployment, the significance of extensive cryptanalysis is on the rise. Three out of the four NIST-PQC round 4 candidates are forms of code-based cryptography. Analyses of asymptotic complexity in information set decoding (ISD) algorithms have been a central focus in the field of code-based cryptography. Recently, Esser, May and Zweydinger (Eurocrypt '22) demonstrate the practicality of the May--Meurer--Thomae (MMT) algorithm by decoding McEliece-1284. Esser and Zweydinger (Eurocrypt '23) propose the time-memory trade-off variant of Becker--Joux--May--Meurer (BJMM) decoding, which solves QC-3138. These works have paved the way for the cryptanalysis of ISD in real-world scenarios.

In this work, we further advance the progress of the abovementioned studies by performing a concrete analysis of MMT decoding. We improve the list construction in MMT so that the number of both candidates and representations in the enumeration phase is increased without the need for additional time and memory. Our new algorithm is theoretically 5.1 times faster than the BJMM algorithm for Classic McEliece I instance. We achieve the minimum time complexity across all categories of Classic McEliece among all ISD algorithms. Moreover, compared with the BJMM algorithm, our MMT algorithm reduces the bit security by 1 to 3 bits for all code based NIST-PQC round 4 candidates. Practical security estimates confirm that all the candidates have sufficiently strong bit security, except for Classic McEliece III, with a 1-bit deficiency.

In addition, we implement our new MMT algorithm in a GPU environment and provide the new record of the McEliece-1409 instance, along with implementation details and experimental analyses. Our study verifies the practical reliability of the code-based candidates against current ISD algorithms.