Javier de la Cruz, Ricardo Villanueva-Polanco
In this paper, we propose to use a twisted dihedral group algebra for public-key cryptography. For this, we introduce a new $2$-cocycle $α_λ$ to twist the dihedral group algebra. Using the ambient space $\mathbb{F}^{α_λ} D_{2n}$, we then introduce a key exchange protocol and present an analysis of its security. Moreover, we explore the properties of the resulting twisted algebra $\mathbb{F}^{α_λ}D_{2n}$, exploiting them to enhance our key exchange protocol. We also introduce a probabilistic public-key scheme derived from our key-exchange protocol and obtain a key encapsulation mechanism (KEM) by applying a well-known generic transformation to our public-key scheme. Finally, we present a proof-of-concept implementation of the resulting key encapsulation mechanism.