International Association for Cryptologic Research

International Association
for Cryptologic Research

CryptoDB

Noam Mazor

Publications

Year
Venue
Title
2023
EUROCRYPT
Non-Adaptive Universal One-Way Hash Functions from Arbitrary One-Way Functions
Two of the most useful cryptographic primitives that can be constructed from one-way functions are pseudorandom generators (PRGs) and universal one-way hash functions (UOWHFs). The three major efficiency measures of these primitives are: seed length, number of calls to the one-way function, and adaptivity of these calls. Although a long and successful line of research studied these primitives, their optimal efficiency is not yet fully understood: there are gaps between the known upper bounds and the known lower bounds for black-box constructions. Interestingly, the first construction of PRGs by H ̊astad, Impagliazzo, Levin, and Luby [SICOMP ’99], and the UOWHFs construction by Rompel [STOC ’90] shared a similar structure. Since then, there was an improvement in the efficiency of both constructions: The state-of-the-art construction of PRGs by Haitner, Reingold, and Vadhan [STOC ’10] uses O(n^4) bits of random seed and O(n^3) non-adaptive calls to the one-way function, or alternatively, seed of size O(n^3) with O(n^3) adaptive calls (Vadhan and Zhen [STOC ’12]). Constructing a UOWHF with similar parameters is still an open question. Currently, the best UOWHF construction by Haitner, Holenstein, Reingold, Vadhan, and Wee [Eurocrypt ’10] uses O(n^13) adaptive calls and a key of size O(n^5). In this work we give the first non-adaptive construction of UOWHFs from arbitrary one-way functions. Our construction uses O(n^9) calls to the one-way function, and a key of length O(n^10). By the result of Applebaum, Ishai, and Kushilevitz [FOCS ’04], the above implies the existence of UOWHFs in NC0, given the existence of one-way functions in NC1. We also show that the PRG construction of Haitner et al., with small modifications, yields a relaxed notion of UOWHFs. In order to analyze this construction, we introduce the notion of next-bit unreachable entropy, which replaces the next-bit pseudoentropy notion, used in the PRG construction above.
2023
TCC
Counting Unpredictable Bits: A Simple PRG from One-way Functions
Noam Mazor Rafael Pass
A central result in the theory of Cryptography, by Hastad, Imagliazzo, Luby and Levin [SICOMP’99], demonstrates that the existence one-way functions (OWF) implies the existence of pseudo-random generators (PRGs). Despite the fundamental importance of this result, and several elegant improvements/simplifications, analyses of constructions of PRGs from OWFs remain complex (both conceptually and technically). Our goal is to provide a construction of a PRG from OWFs with a simple proof of security; we thus focus on the setting of non-uniform security (i.e., we start off with a OWF secure against non-uniform PPT, and we aim to get a PRG secure against non-uniform PPT). Our main result is a construction of a PRG from OWFs with a self-contained, simple, proof of security, relying only on the Goldreich-Levin Theorem (and the Chernoff bound). Although our main goal is simplicity, the construction, and a variant there-of, also improves the efficiency—in terms of invocations and seed lengths—of the state-of-the-art constructions due to [Haitner-Reingold-Vadhan, STOC’10] and [Vadhan-Zheng, STOC’12], by a factor O(log2 n). The key novelty in our analysis is a generalization of the Blum-Micali [FOCS’82] notion of unpredictabilty—rather than requiring that every bit in the output of a function is unpredictable, we count how many unpredictable bits a function has, and we show that any OWF on n input bits (after hashing the input and the output) has n + O(log n) unpredictable output bits. Such unpredictable bits can next be “extracted” into a pseudorandom string using standard techniques.
2021
TCC
Simple Constructions from (Almost) Regular One-Way Functions 📺
Noam Mazor Jiapeng Zhang
Two of the most useful cryptographic primitives that can be constructed from one-way functions are pseudorandom generators (PRGs) and universal one-way hash functions (UOWHFs). In order to implement them in practice, the efficiency of such constructions must be considered. The three major efficiency measures are: the seed length, the call complexity to the one-way function, and the adaptivity of these calls. Still, the optimal efficiency of these constructions is not yet fully understood: there exist gaps between the known upper bound and the known lower bound for black-box constructions. A special class of one-way functions called unknown-regular one-way functions is much better understood. Haitner, Harnik and Reingold (CRYPTO 2006) presented a PRG construction with semi-linear seed length and linear number of calls based on a method called randomized iterate. Ames, Gennaro and Venkitasubramaniam (TCC 2012) then gave a construction of UOWHF with similar parameters and using similar ideas. On the other hand, Holenstein and Sinha (FOCS 2012) and Barhum and Holenstein (TCC 2013) showed an almost linear call-complexity lower bound for black-box constructions of PRGs and UOWHFs from one-way functions. Hence Haitner et al. and Ames et al. reached tight constructions (in terms of seed length and the number of calls) of PRGs and UOWHFs from regular one-way functions. These constructions, however, are adaptive. In this work, we present non-adaptive constructions for both primitives which match the optimal call-complexity given by Holenstein and Sinha and Barhum and Holenstein. Our constructions, besides being simple and non-adaptive, are robust also for almost-regular one-way functions.
2020
TCC
Lower Bounds on the Time/Memory Tradeoff of Function Inversion 📺
We study time/memory tradeoffs of function inversion: an algorithm, i.e., an inverter, equipped with an s-bit advice on a randomly chosen function f:[n]->[n] and using q oracle queries to f, tries to invert a randomly chosen output y of f (i.e., to find x such that f(x)=y). Much progress was done regarding adaptive function inversion - the inverter is allowed to make adaptive oracle queries. Hellman [IEEE transactions on Information Theory '80] presented an adaptive inverter that inverts with high probability a random f. Fiat and Naor [SICOMP '00] proved that for any s,q with s^3 q = n^3 (ignoring low-order terms), an s-advice, q-query variant of Hellman's algorithm inverts a constant fraction of the image points of any function. Yao [STOC '90] proved a lower bound of sq<=n for this problem. Closing the gap between the above lower and upper bounds is a long-standing open question. Very little is known of the non-adaptive variant of the question - the inverter chooses its queries in advance. The only known upper bounds, i.e., inverters, are the trivial ones (with s+q=n), and the only lower bound is the above bound of Yao. In a recent work, Corrigan-Gibbs and Kogan [TCC '19] partially justified the difficulty of finding lower bounds on non-adaptive inverters, showing that a lower bound on the time/memory tradeoff of non-adaptive inverters implies a lower bound on low-depth Boolean circuits. Bounds that, for a strong enough choice of parameters, are notoriously hard to prove. We make progress on the above intriguing question, both for the adaptive and the non-adaptive case, proving the following lower bounds on restricted families of inverters: Linear-advice (adaptive inverter): If the advice string is a linear function of f (e.g., A*f, for some matrix A, viewing f as a vector in [n]^n), then s+q is \Omega(n). The bound generalizes to the case where the advice string of f_1 + f_2, i.e., the coordinate-wise addition of the truth tables of f_1 and f_2, can be computed from the description of f_1 and f_2 by a low communication protocol. Affine non-adaptive decoders: If the non-adaptive inverter has an affine decoder - it outputs a linear function, determined by the advice string and the element to invert, of the query answers - then s is \Omega(n) (regardless of q). Affine non-adaptive decision trees: If the non-adaptive inverter is a d-depth affine decision tree - it outputs the evaluation of a decision tree whose nodes compute a linear function of the answers to the queries - and q < cn for some universal c>0, then s is \Omega(n/d \log n).
2019
TCC
Channels of Small Log-Ratio Leakage and Characterization of Two-Party Differentially Private Computation
Consider a ppt two-party protocol $$\varPi = (\mathsf {A} ,\mathsf {B} )$$ in which the parties get no private inputs and obtain outputs $$O^{\mathsf {A} },O^{\mathsf {B} }\in \left\{ 0,1\right\} $$, and let $$V^\mathsf {A} $$ and $$V^\mathsf {B} $$ denote the parties’ individual views. Protocol $$\varPi $$ has $$\alpha $$-agreement if $$\Pr [O^{\mathsf {A} }=O^{\mathsf {B} }] = \tfrac{1}{2}+\alpha $$. The leakage of $$\varPi $$ is the amount of information a party obtains about the event $$\left\{ O^{\mathsf {A} }=O^{\mathsf {B} }\right\} $$; that is, the leakage$$\epsilon $$ is the maximum, over $$\mathsf {P} \in \left\{ \mathsf {A} ,\mathsf {B} \right\} $$, of the distance between $$V^\mathsf {P} |_{O^{\mathsf {A} }= O^{\mathsf {B} }}$$ and $$V^\mathsf {P} |_{O^{\mathsf {A} }\ne O^{\mathsf {B} }}$$. Typically, this distance is measured in statistical distance, or, in the computational setting, in computational indistinguishability. For this choice, Wullschleger [TCC ’09] showed that if $$\epsilon \ll \alpha $$ then the protocol can be transformed into an OT protocol.We consider measuring the protocol leakage by the log-ratio distance (which was popularized by its use in the differential privacy framework). The log-ratio distance between X, Y over domain $$\varOmega $$ is the minimal $$\epsilon \ge 0$$ for which, for every $$v \in \varOmega $$, $$\log \frac{\Pr [X=v]}{\Pr [Y=v]} \in [-\epsilon ,\epsilon ]$$. In the computational setting, we use computational indistinguishability from having log-ratio distance $$\epsilon $$. We show that a protocol with (noticeable) accuracy $$\alpha \in \varOmega (\epsilon ^2)$$ can be transformed into an OT protocol (note that this allows $$\epsilon \gg \alpha $$). We complete the picture, in this respect, showing that a protocol with $$\alpha \in o(\epsilon ^2)$$ does not necessarily imply OT. Our results hold for both the information theoretic and the computational settings, and can be viewed as a “fine grained” approach to “weak OT amplification”.We then use the above result to fully characterize the complexity of differentially private two-party computation for the XOR function, answering the open question put by Goyal, Khurana, Mironov, Pandey, and Sahai, [ICALP ’16] and Haitner, Nissim, Omri, Shaltiel, and Silbak [22] [FOCS ’18]. Specifically, we show that for any (noticeable) $$\alpha \in \varOmega (\epsilon ^2)$$, a two-party protocol that computes the XOR function with $$\alpha $$-accuracy and $$\epsilon $$-differential privacy can be transformed into an OT protocol. This improves upon Goyal et al. that only handle $$\alpha \in \varOmega (\epsilon )$$, and upon Haitner et al. who showed that such a protocol implies (infinitely-often) key agreement (and not OT). Our characterization is tight since OT does not follow from protocols in which $$\alpha \in o( \epsilon ^2)$$, and extends to functions (over many bits) that “contain” an “embedded copy” of the XOR function.