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Concept
Ring learning with errors key exchange
Summary
In cryptography, a public key exchange algorithm is a cryptographic algorithm which allows two parties to create and share a secret key, which they can use to encrypt messages between themselves. The ring learning with errors key exchange (RLWE-KEX) is one of a new class of public key exchange algorithms that are designed to be secure against an adversary that possesses a quantum computer. This is important because some public key algorithms in use today will be easily broken by a quantum computer if such computers are implemented. RLWE-KEX is one of a set of post-quantum cryptographic algorithms which are based on the difficulty of solving certain mathematical problems involving lattices. Unlike older lattice based cryptographic algorithms, the RLWE-KEX is provably reducible to a known hard problem in lattices.
Since the 1980s the security of cryptographic key exchanges and digital signatures over the Internet has been primarily based on a small number of public key algorithms. The security of these algorithms is based on a similarly small number of computationally hard problems in classical computing. These problems are the difficulty of factoring the product of two carefully chosen prime numbers, the difficulty to compute discrete logarithms in a carefully chosen finite field, and the difficulty of computing discrete logarithms in a carefully chosen elliptic curve group. These problems are very difficult to solve on a classical computer (the type of computer the world has known since the 1940s through today) but are rather easily solved by a relatively small quantum computer using only 5 to 10 thousand of bits of memory. There is optimism in the computer industry that larger scale quantum computers will be available around 2030. If a quantum computer of sufficient size were built, all of the public key algorithms based on these three classically hard problems would be insecure. This public key cryptography is used today to secure Internet websites, protect computer login information, and prevent our computers from accepting malicious software.
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