Deterministic and non-deterministic basis reduction techniques for NTRU lattices

Finding the shortest or a “short enough” vector in an integral lattice of substantial dimension is a difficult problem. The problem is not known to be but most people believe it is [7]. The security of the newly proposed NTRU cryptosystem depends solely on this fact. However, by the definition NTRU lattices possess a certain symmetry. This suggests that there may be a way of taking advantage of this symmetry to enable a new cryptanalytical approach in combination with existing good lattice reduction algorithms. The aim of this work is to exploit the symmetry inherent in NTRU lattices to design a non-deterministic algorithm for improving basis reduction techniques for NTRU lattices. We show how the non-trivial cyclic automorphism of an NTRU lattice enables further reduction. Our approach combines the recently published versions of the famous LLL algorithm for lattice basis reduction with our automorphism utilization techniques.