The forty-year old McEliece public-key crypto-system is revisited with the help of recently developed resources: an improved Peterson-Gorenstein-Zierler decoder for alternant error-correcting codes; a symbolic computation system and a package of functional utilities for the computations involved in defining, coding and decoding error-correcting codes, fully programmed in Python; and a web page with free-access to the materials generated by the project. The main interest of the McEliece system stems from it being a serious candidate for a post-quantum cryptography standard.
Keywords: post-quantum cryptography, alternant codes, symbolic computation, free software.
MSC2010 Subject Classification: 11T71, 68-04, 68W30, 94A60.
Paraules clau: criptografia postquàntica, codis alternants, computació simbòlica, programari lliure.
Classificació MSC2010: 11T71, 68-04, 68W30, 94A60.