New HOVER Attack Breaks McEliece Challenges; Key Shortcut Found by LLM

jedisct1 · x · 2026-08-24

Markku-Juhani O. Saarinen published the HOVER (Higher-Order Vanishing Endomorphism Recovery) attack against the McEliece cryptosystem. By replacing the inefficient low-rank direction search in Higher-Order Vanishing (HOV) with a faster linear algebra step, the attack significantly improves efficiency. The team used this method to end-to-end break five TII McEliece challenge keys, including TII-252, though analysis suggests it does not threaten Classic McEliece parameters in its current form. Notably, the main cryptanalytic shortcut was discovered using a large language model, highlighting AI's potential in cryptanalysis.

Original post →

More from Research

Research channel →