Updated: 2 hours 34 min ago

### Non-Zero Inner Product Encryption Schemes from Various Assumptions: LWE, DDH and DCR

Thu, 01/17/2019 - 19:14
In non-zero inner product encryption (NIPE) schemes, ciphertexts and secret keys are associated with vectors and decryption is possible whenever the inner product of these vectors does not equal zero. So far, much effort on constructing bilinear map-based NIPE schemes have been made and this has lead to many efficient schemes. However, the constructions of NIPE schemes without bilinear maps are much less investigated. The only known other NIPE constructions are based on lattices, however, they are all highly inefficient due to the need of converting inner product operations into circuits or branching programs. To remedy our rather poor understanding regarding NIPE schemes without bilinear maps, we provide two methods for constructing NIPE schemes: a direct construction from lattices and a generic construction from functional encryption schemes for inner products (LinFE). For our first direct construction, it highly departs from the traditional lattice-based constructions and we rely heavily on new tools concerning Gaussian measures over multi-dimensional lattices to prove security. For our second generic construction, using the recent constructions of LinFE schemes as building blocks, we obtain the first NIPE constructions based on the DDH and DCR assumptions. In particular, we obtain the first NIPE schemes without bilinear maps or lattices.

### Using TopGear in Overdrive: A more efficient ZKPoK for SPDZ

Thu, 01/17/2019 - 19:13
We present a modification to the ZKPoKs used in the HighGear offline protocol for the SPDZ Multi-Party Computation protocol. This modification allows us to both increase the security of the underlying protocols, whilst at the same time maintaining roughly the same performance in terms of memory and bandwidth consumption. The last two being major constraints of the original HighGear protocol. We argue the inefficiency of HighGear means that current implementations of SPDZ use far too low security parameters in a number of places. We show that using TopGear one can select high security parameters for all cases.

### A Formal Treatment of Hardware Wallets

Thu, 01/17/2019 - 19:13
Bitcoin, being the most successful cryptocurrency, has been repeatedly attacked with many users losing their funds. The industry's response to securing the user's assets is to offer tamper-resistant hardware wallets. Although such wallets are considered to be the most secure means for managing an account, no formal attempt has been previously done to identify, model and formally verify their properties. This paper provides the first formal model of the Bitcoin hardware wallet operations. We identify the properties and security parameters of a Bitcoin wallet and formally define them in the Universal Composition (UC) Framework. We present a modular treatment of a hardware wallet ecosystem, by realizing the wallet functionality in a hybrid setting defined by a set of protocols. This approach allows us to capture in detail the wallet's components, their interaction and the potential threats. We deduce the wallet's security by proving that it is secure under common cryptographic assumptions, provided that there is no deviation in the protocol execution. Finally, we define the attacks that are successful under a protocol deviation, and analyze the security of commercially available wallets.

### FE for Inner Products and Its Application to Decentralized ABE

Thu, 01/17/2019 - 19:10
In this work, we revisit the primitive functional encryption (FE) for inner products and show its application to decentralized attribute- based encryption (ABE). Particularly, we derive an FE for inner prod- ucts that satisfies a stronger notion, and show how to use such an FE to construct decentralized ABE for the class $\{0,1\}$-LSSS against bounded collusions in the plain model. We formalize the FE notion and show how to achieve such an FE under the LWE or DDH assumption. Therefore, our resulting decentralized ABE can be constructed under the same standard assumptions, improving the prior construction by Lewko and Waters (Eurocrypt 2011). Finally, we also point out challenges to construct decentralized ABE for general functions by establishing a relation between such an ABE and witness encryption for general NP statements.

### Safety in Numbers: On the Need for Robust Diffie-Hellman Parameter Validation

Thu, 01/17/2019 - 19:08
We consider the problem of constructing Diffie-Hellman (DH) parameters which pass standard approaches to parameter validation but for which the Discrete Logarithm Problem (DLP) is relatively easy to solve. We consider both the finite field setting and the elliptic curve setting. For finite fields, we show how to construct DH parameters $(p,q,g)$ for the safe prime setting in which $p=2q+1$ is prime, $q$ is relatively smooth but fools random-base Miller-Rabin primality testing with some reasonable probability, and $g$ is of order $q$ mod $p$. The construction involves modifying and combining known methods for obtaining Carmichael numbers. Concretely, we provide an example with 1024-bit $p$ which passes OpenSSL's Diffie-Hellman validation procedure with probability $2^{-24}$ (for versions of OpenSSL prior to 1.1.0i). Here, the largest factor of $q$ has 121 bits, meaning that the DLP can be solved with about $2^{64}$ effort using the Pohlig-Hellman algorithm. We go on to explain how this parameter set can be used to mount offline dictionary attacks against PAKE protocols. In the elliptic curve case, we use an algorithm of Broker and Stevenhagen to construct an elliptic curve $E$ over a finite field ${\mathbb{F}}_p$ having a specified number of points $n$. We are able to select $n$ of the form $h\cdot q$ such that $h$ is a small co-factor, $q$ is relatively smooth but fools random-base Miller-Rabin primality testing with some reasonable probability, and $E$ has a point of order $q$. Concretely, we provide example curves at the 128-bit security level with $h=1$, where $q$ passes a single random-base Miller-Rabin primality test with probability $1/4$ and where the elliptic curve DLP can be solved with about $2^{44}$ effort. Alternatively, we can pass the test with probability $1/8$ and solve the elliptic curve DLP with about $2^{35.5}$ effort. These ECDH parameter sets lead to similar attacks on PAKE protocols relying on elliptic curves. Our work shows the importance of performing proper (EC)DH parameter validation in cryptographic implementations and/or the wisdom of relying on standardised parameter sets of known provenance.

### Collusion Resistant Broadcast and Trace from Positional Witness Encryption

Thu, 01/17/2019 - 19:07
An emerging trend is for researchers to identify cryptography primitives for which feasibility was first established under obfuscation and then move the realization to a different setting. In this work we explore a new such avenue — to move obfuscation-based cryptography to the assumption of (positional) witness encryption. Our goal is to develop techniques and tools, which we will dub “witness encryption friendly” primitives and use these to develop a methodology for building advanced cryptography from positional witness encryption. We take a bottom up approach and pursue our general agenda by attacking the specific problem of building collusion-resistant broadcast systems with tracing from positional witness encryption. We achieve a system where the size of ciphertexts, public key and private key are polynomial in the security parameter $\lambda$ and independent of the number of users N in the broadcast system. Currently, systems with such parameters are only known from indistinguishability obfuscation.

### Shorter Ring Signatures from Standard Assumptions

Thu, 01/17/2019 - 19:07
Ring signatures, introduced by Rivest, Shamir and Tauman (ASIACRYPT 2001), allow to sign a message on behalf of a set of users while guaranteeing authenticity and anonymity. Groth and Kohlweiss (EUROCRYPT 2015) and Libert et al. (EUROCRYPT 2016) constructed schemes with signatures of size logarithmic in the number of users. An even shorter ring signature, of size independent from the number of users, was recently proposed by Malavolta and Schroder (ASIACRYPT 2017). However, all these short signatures are obtained relying on strong and controversial assumptions. Namely, the former schemes are both proven secure in the random oracle model while the later requires non-falsifiable assumptions. The most efficient construction under mild assumptions remains the construction of Chandran et al. (ICALP 2007) with a signature of size $\Theta(\sqrt{n})$, where $n$ is the number of users, and security is based on the Diffie-Hellman assumption in bilinear groups (the SXDH assumption in asymmetric bilinear groups). In this work we construct an asymptotically shorter ring signature from the hardness of the Diffie-Hellman assumption in bilinear groups. Each signature comprises $\Theta(\sqrt[3]{n})$ group elements, signing a message requires computing $\Theta(\sqrt[3]{n})$ exponentiations, and verifying a signature requires $\Theta(n^{2/3})$ pairing operations. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first ring signature based on bilinear groups with $o(\sqrt{n})$ signatures and sublinear verification complexity.

### Analysis of Two Countermeasures against the Signal Leakage Attack

Thu, 01/17/2019 - 19:07
In 2017, a practical attack, referred to as the signal leakage attack, against reconciliation-based RLWE key exchange protocols was proposed. In particular, this attack can recover a long-term private key if a key pair is reused. Directly motivated by this attack, recently, Ding et al. proposed two countermeasures against the attack. One is the RLWE key exchange protocol with reusable keys (KERK), which is included in the Ding Key Exchange, a NIST submission. The idea for this construction is using zero knowledge proof. The other is the practical randomized RLWE-based key exchange (PRKE) (TOC’18), which mixes more randomization. We found that the two countermeasures above can effectively prevent malicious Alice from recovering the private key of Bob when keys are reused. However, both countermeasures don’t consider the case where malicious Bob tries to recover the private key of Alice. In particular, malicious Bob can recover the private key of Alice by carefully choosing what he sends and observing whether shared keys match. By analyzing the complexities of these attacks, the results show these attacks are practical and effective. Notice that the key to carry out these attacks is that malicious Bob chooses a RLWE sample with the special structure as his public key. Therefore, other RLWE-based schemes, including KEM (or key exchange) and PKE, are also vulnerable to these attacks. In response to these attacks, we propose a mechanism where one party can construct a new ”public key” of the other party, and in order to illustrate the mechanism, we give an improved KERK.

### Consolidating Security Notions in Hardware Masking

Thu, 01/17/2019 - 04:15
In this paper, we revisit the security conditions of masked hardware implementations. We describe a new, succinct, information-theoretic condition called d-glitch immunity which is both necessary and sufficient for security in the presence of glitches. We show that this single condition includes, but is not limited to, previous security notions such as those used in higher-order threshold implementations and in abstractions using ideal gates. As opposed to these previously known necessary conditions, our new condition is also sufficient. On the other hand, it excludes avoidable notions such as uniformity. We also treat the notion of (strong) non- interference from an information-theoretic point-of-view in order to unify the different security concepts and pave the way to the verification of composability in the presence of glitches. We conclude the paper by demonstrating how the condition can be used as an efficient and highly generic flaw detection mechanism for a variety of functions and schemes based on different operations.

### BurnBox: Self-Revocable Encryption in a World of Compelled Access

Wed, 01/16/2019 - 15:46
Dissidents, journalists, and others require technical means to protect their privacy in the face of compelled access to their digital devices (smartphones, laptops, tablets, etc.). For example, authorities increasingly force disclosure of all secrets, including passwords, to search devices upon national border crossings. We therefore present the design, implementation, and evaluation of a new system to help victims of compelled searches. Our system, called BurnBox, provides self-revocable encryption: the user can temporarily disable their access to specific files stored remotely, without revealing which files were revoked during compelled searches, even if the adversary also compromises the cloud storage service. They can later restore access. We formalize the threat model and provide a construction that uses an erasable index, secure erasure of keys, and standard cryptographic tools in order to provide security supported by our formal analysis. We report on a prototype implementation, which showcases the practicality of BurnBox.

### VMPC-R Cryptographically Secure Pseudo-Random Number Generator Alternative to RC4

Wed, 01/16/2019 - 13:02
We present a new Cryptographically Secure Pseudo-Random Number Generator. It uses permutations as its internal state, similarly to the RC4 stream cipher. We describe a statistical test which revealed non-random patterns in a sample of $2^{16.6}$ outputs of a 3-bit RC4. Our new algorithm produced $2^{46.8}$ undistinguishable from random 3-bit outputs in the same test. We probed $2^{51}$ outputs of the algorithm in different statistical tests with different word sizes and found no way of distinguishing the keystream from a random source. The size of the algorithm's internal state is $2^{3424}$ (for an 8-bit implementation). The algorithm is cryptographically secure to the extent we were able to analyse it. Its design is simple and easy to implement. We present the generator along with a key scheduling algorithm processing both keys and initialization vectors.

### Understanding and Constructing AKE via Double-key Key Encapsulation Mechanism

Wed, 01/16/2019 - 01:48
Motivated by abstracting the common idea behind several implicitly authenticated key exchange (AKE) protocols, we introduce a primitive that we call double-key key encapsulation mechanism (2-key KEM). It is a special type of KEM involving two pairs of secret-public keys and satisfying some function and security property. Such 2-key KEM serves as the core building block and provides alternative approaches to simplify the constructions of AKE. To see the usefulness of 2-key KEM, we show how several existing constructions of AKE can be captured as 2-key KEM and understood in a unified framework, including widely used HMQV, NAXOS, Okamoto-AKE, and FSXY12-13 schemes. Then, we show 1) how to construct 2-key KEM from concrete assumptions, 2) how to adapt the classical Fujisaki-Okamoto transformation and KEM combiner to achieve the security requirement of 2-key KEM, 3) an elegant Kyber-AKE over lattice using the improved Fujisaki-Okamoto technique.

### Upper Bound on $\lambda_1(\Lambda^{\bot}(\mathbf A))$

Tue, 01/15/2019 - 15:26
It has been shown that, for appropriate parameters, solving the $\mathsf{SIS}$ problem in the average case is at least as hard as approximating certain lattice problems in the worst case %on any $n$-dimensional lattice to within polynomial factor $\beta\cdot\widetilde{O}(\sqrt n)$, where typically $\beta=O(\sqrt{n\log n})$ such that random $\mathsf{SIS}$ instances admit a solution. In this work, we show that $\beta=O(1)$, i.e., $\beta$ is essentially upper-bounded by a constant. This directly gives us a poly-time exhaustive search algorithm for solving the $\mathsf{SIS}$ problem (resulting in approximating certain worst-case lattice problems to within $\widetilde{O}(\sqrt n)$ factor). Although the exhaustive search algorithm is rather inefficient for typical setting of parameters, our result indicates that lattice-based cryptography is not secure, at least in an asymptotical sense. Our work is based on an observation of the lower/upper bounds on the smoothing parameter for lattices.

### nQUIC: Noise-Based QUIC Packet Protection

Tue, 01/15/2019 - 15:24
We present nQUIC, a variant of QUIC-TLS that uses the Noise protocol framework for its key exchange and basis of its packet protector with no semantic transport changes. nQUIC is designed for deployment in systems and for applications that assert trust in raw public keys rather than PKI-based certificate chains. It uses a fixed key exchange algorithm, compromising agility for implementation and verification ease. nQUIC provides mandatory server and optional client authentication, resistance to Key Compromise Impersonation attacks, and forward and future secrecy of traffic key derivation, which makes it favorable to QUIC-TLS for long-lived QUIC connections in comparable applications. We developed two interoperable prototype implementations written in Go and Rust. Experimental results show that nQUIC finishes its handshake in a comparable amount of time as QUIC-TLS.

### Group Signatures with Selective Linkability

Tue, 01/15/2019 - 15:23

### Non-malleable encryption with proofs of plaintext knowledge and applications to voting

Tue, 01/15/2019 - 15:23
Non-malleable asymmetric encryption schemes which prove plaintext knowledge are sufficient for secrecy in some domains. For example, ballot secrecy in voting. In these domains, some applications derive encryption schemes by coupling malleable ciphertexts with proofs of plaintext knowledge, without evidence that the sufficient condition (for secrecy) is satisfied nor an independent security proof (of secrecy). Consequently, it is unknown whether these applications satisfy desirable secrecy properties. In this article, we propose a generic construction for such a coupling and show that our construction produces non-malleable encryption schemes which prove plaintext knowledge. Furthermore, we show how our results can be used to prove ballot secrecy of voting systems. Accordingly, we facilitate the development of applications satisfying their security objectives.

### STP Models of Optimal Differential and Linear Trail for S-box Based Ciphers

Tue, 01/15/2019 - 15:22
Automatic tools have played an important role in designing new cryptographic primitives and evaluating the security of ciphers. Simple Theorem Prover constraint solver (STP) has been used to search for differential/linear trails of ciphers. This paper proposes general STP-based models searching for differential and linear trails with the optimal probability and correlation for S-box based ciphers. In order to get trails with the best probability or correlation for ciphers with arbitrary S-box, we give an efficient algorithm to describe probability or correlation of S-Box. Based on the algorithm we present a search model for optimal differential and linear trails, which is efficient for ciphers with S-Boxes whose DDTs/LATs contain entities not equal to the power of two. Meanwhile, the STP-based model for single-key impossible differentials considering key schedule is proposed, which traces the propagation of values from plaintext to ciphertext instead of propagations of differences. And we found that there is no 5-round AES-128 single-key truncated impossible differential considering key schedule, where input and output differences have only one active byte respectively. Finally, our proposed models are utilized to search for trails of bit-wise ciphers GIFT-128, DES, DESL and ICEBERG and word-wise ciphers ARIA, SM4 and SKINNY-128. As a result, improved results are presented in terms of the number of rounds or probabilities/correlations.

### A publicly verifiable quantum signature scheme based on asymmetric quantum cryptography

Tue, 01/15/2019 - 15:21
In 2018, Shi et al. 's showed that Kaushik et al.'s quantum signature scheme is defective. It suffers from the forgery attack. They further proposed an improvement, trying to avoid the attack. However, after examining we found their improved quantum signature is deniable, because the verifier can impersonate the signer to sign a message. After that, when a dispute occurs, he can argue that the signature was not signed by him. It was from the signer. To overcome the drawback, in this paper, we raise an improvement to make it publicly verifiable and hence more suitable to be applied in real life. After cryptanalysis, we confirm that our improvement not only resist the forgery attack but also is undeniable.

### Leakage-Abuse Attacks Against Searchable Encryption

Mon, 01/14/2019 - 17:35
Schemes for secure outsourcing of client data with search capability are being increasingly marketed and deployed. In the literature, schemes for accomplishing this efficiently are called Searchable Encryption (SE). They achieve high efficiency with provable security by means of a quantifiable leakage profile. However, the degree to which SE leakage can be exploited by an adversary is not well understood. To address this, we present a characterization of the leakage profiles of in-the-wild searchable encryption products and SE schemes in the literature, and present attack models based on an adversarial server’s prior knowledge. Then we empirically investigate the security of searchable encryption by providing query recovery and plaintext recovery attacks that exploit these leakage profiles. We term these 'leakage-abuse attacks' and demonstrate their effectiveness for varying leakage profiles and levels of server knowledge, for realistic scenarios. Amongst our contributions are realistic active attacks which have not been previously explored.

### Privacy Loss Classes: The Central Limit Theorem in Differential Privacy

Mon, 01/14/2019 - 12:11
Quantifying the privacy loss of a privacy-preserving mechanism on potentially sensitive data is a complex and well-researched topic; the de-facto standard for privacy measures are $\varepsilon$-differential privacy (DP) and its versatile relaxation $(\varepsilon,\delta)$-approximate differential privacy (ADP). Recently, novel variants of (A)DP focused on giving tighter privacy bounds under continual observation. In this paper we unify many previous works via the \emph{privacy loss distribution} (PLD) of a mechanism. We show that for non-adaptive mechanisms, the privacy loss under sequential composition undergoes a convolution and will converge to a Gauss distribution (the central limit theorem for DP). We derive several relevant insights: we can now characterize mechanisms by their \emph{privacy loss class}, i.e., by the Gauss distribution to which their PLD converges, which allows us to give novel ADP bounds for mechanisms based on their privacy loss class; we derive \emph{exact} analytical guarantees for the approximate randomized response mechanism and an \emph{exact} analytical and closed formula for the Gauss mechanism, that, given $\varepsilon$, calculates $\delta$, s.t., the mechanism is $(\varepsilon, \delta)$-ADP (not an over-approximating bound).