Jean-Christophe is an Associate Professor in Computer Science at ENAC. He did his post-doc at Institut National des Sciences Appliquées Centre Val de Loire (INSA-CVL) and Laboratoire d’Informatique Fondamentale d’Orléans (LIFO), under the supervision of Jérémy Briffaut. He earned his Ph.D in 2016, under the supervision of Philippe Gaborit and Carlos Aguilar Melchor. His research interests include Cryptography especially based on Error Correcting Codes and Lattices, as well as associated Algorithms for solving hard problems. He also participated in National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) standardization process and contributed in the design of 6 cryptographic schemes: BIKE, HQC, LAKE, LOCKER, Ouroboros-R and RQC.
Title of talk: Code-based cryptography is being ready for post-quantum PKE standardization
Abstract: Three years ago, the National Institute for Standards and Technologies (NIST) initiated a process to standardize quantum safe cryptographic primitives: public-key encryption, key-exchange and digital signature schemes. With almost 25% of round 2 submissions, code-based cryptography stands as a major candidate for post-quantum cryptography.
In this talk, I will introduce the fundamentals of code-based cryptography, present historical constructions that have inspired recent designs, and provide elements to understand why code-based cryptography stands as a mature possible replacement for encryption.
Earlier this summer, the competition has entered its third round, with one code-based finalist and two alternate candidates. I will give an overview of these schemes — with emphasis over HQC, and discuss their respective advantages and drawbacks regarding several use cases.
Finally, I will conclude the talk with challenges and open questions code-based cryptography faces.