What is the security strength of McEliece variants? Please help me understand the security strength of McEliece variants prepared for Round 3.
I looked at the specifications - https://classic.mceliece.org/nist/mceliece-20201010.pdf - it doesn't have the security strength information - normally other algorithms submitted to NIST usually carry that information in the specification that they submit.
ISARA implementation of Classic McEliece - &quot;6960119&quot; variant is 128 bits?  and &quot;8192128&quot; variant 256 bits? Probably based on  https://classic.mceliece.org/nist/mceliece-20190331.pdf (though this specification does not talk about the security strength)
What about the other variants submitted for Round 3? How about the NIST Level for these variants?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McEliece_cryptosystem says 80 bits of security for some of the variants. The description further says &quot;In its round 3 submissions to the NIST post-quantum standardization the highest level of security, level 5 is given for parameter sets 6688128, 6960119, and 8192128. &quot;
How about the other variants what is their security level?
Further search at this Round 3 Official Comment Newsgroup - found here
https://csrc.nist.gov/CSRC/media/Projects/post-quantum-cryptography/documents/round-3/official-comments/Classic-McEliece-round3-official-comment.pdf
https://groups.google.com/a/list.nist.gov/g/pqc-forum/c/EiwxGnfQgec?pli=1
OP (Kirk Fleming) sets up these estimates

mceliece-3488-064   143
mceliece-4608-096   207
mceliece-6688-128   272
mceliece-6960-119   272
mceliece-8192-128   272

DJ Bernstein (from the submitters - the Classic McEliece team) doesn't appear to be too enthusiastic about those security strength bits.