TII launches UAE-first cryptography challenges

Regional News

The Technology Innovation Institute (TII) has launched the TII McEliece Challenges and is inviting participants to assess concrete hardness of the renowned McEliece cryptosystem by solving multiple challenges.

The challenges aim to strengthen understanding of cryptosystems that are used globally to protect privacy of individuals and organisations.

The McEliece cryptosystem is a public key encryption scheme with a reputation for resilience against attacks. Led by TII’s Cryptography Research Center (CRC), participants will be able to validate the security of the McEliece cryptosystem and, in doing so, identify possible weaknesses.

The year-long challenges will involve multiple McEliece-based cryptanalysis problems with increasing levels of difficulty that explore three different tracks –Theoretical Key Recovery Algorithms, Practical Key Recovery, and Message Recovery.

Dr Najwa Aaraj, Chief Researcher, Cryptography Research Center, said: “In addition to providing breakthrough enhancements to the current McEliece cryptosystem, the challenges give us a