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2.3.11 What are lattice-based cryptosystems?

Lattice-based cryptosystems are based on NP-complete problems (see Question 2.3.1) involving lattices. A lattice can be viewed as the set of all linear combinations with integral coefficients of a specified set of elements in a vector space. An example of a lattice is the infinite square grid in 2-dimensional space consisting of all points with integral coordinates. This lattice is generated by integral linear combinations of the vectors (0,1) and (1,0).

Lattice-based methods fall into two basic classes, although the solution methods for both are identical. In fact, there are efficient transformations between the two classes. The first class is based on the so-called subset sum problem: Given a set of numbers S = and another number K, find a subset of S whose values sum to K. The knapsack problem of Merkle and Hellman [MH78] is an example of this.

Other lattice-based methods require finding short vectors embedded in a lattice or finding points in the vector space close to vertices of the lattice or close to vectors embedded in the lattice. The method of Ajtai and Dwork [AD97] is an example of this type.

So far lattice-based methods have not proven effective as a foundation for public-key methods. In order for a lattice-based cryptosystem to be secure, the dimension of the underlying problem has to be large. This results in a large key size, rendering encryption and decryption quite slow. Ongoing research aims to improve the efficiency of these cryptosystems.

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