International Association for Cryptologic Research

International Association
for Cryptologic Research

CryptoDB

Julian Nowakowski

ORCID: 0000-0003-3066-0133

Publications

Year
Venue
Title
2023
ASIACRYPT
Too Many Hints - When LLL Breaks LWE
Alexander May Julian Nowakowski
All modern lattice-based schemes build on variants of the LWE problem. Information leakage of the LWE secret $\mathbf{s} \in \mathbb{Z}_q^n$ is usually modeled via so-called hints, i.e., inner products of $\mathbf{s}$ with some known vector. At Crypto`20, Dachman-Soled, Ducas, Gong and Rossi (DDGR) defined among other so-called perfect hints and modular hints. The trailblazing DDGR framework allows to integrate and combine hints successively into lattices, and estimates the resulting LWE security loss. We introduce a new methodology to integrate and combine an arbitrary number of perfect and modular in a single stroke. As opposed to DDGR's, our methodology is significantly more efficient in constructing lattice bases, and thus easily allows for a large number of hints up to cryptographic dimensions -- a regime that is currently impractical in DDGR's implementation. The efficiency of our method defines a large LWE parameter regime, in which we can fully carry out attacks faster than DDGR can solely estimate them. The benefits of our approach allow us to practically determine which number of hints is sufficient to efficiently break LWE-based lattice schemes in practice. E.g., for mod-$q$ hints, i.e., modular hints defined over $\Z_q$, we reconstruct \Kyber-512 secret keys via LLL reduction (only!) with an amount of $449$ hints. Our results for perfect hints significantly improve over these numbers, requiring for LWE dimension $n$ roughly $n/2$ perfect hints. E.g., we reconstruct via LLL reduction \Kyber-512 keys with merely $234$ perfect hints. If we resort to stronger lattice reduction techniques like BKZ, we need even fewer hints. For mod-$q$ hints our method is extremely efficient, e.g., taking total time for constructing our lattice bases and secret key recovery via LLL of around 20 mins for dimension 512. For perfect hints in dimension 512, we require around 3 hours. Our results demonstrate that especially perfect hints are powerful in practice, and stress the necessity to properly protect lattice schemes against leakage.
2023
ASIACRYPT
Solving the Hidden Number Problem for CSIDH and CSURF via Automated Coppersmith
Jonas Meers Julian Nowakowski
We define and analyze the Commutative Isogeny Hidden Number Problem which is the natural analogue of the Hidden Number Problem in the CSIDH and CSURF setting. In short, the task is as follows: Given two supersingular elliptic curves \(E_A\), \(E_B\) and access to an oracle that outputs some of the most significant bits of the \(\ensuremath{\mathsf{CDH}}\) of two curves, an adversary must compute the shared curve \(E_{AB}=\ensuremath{\mathsf{CDH}}(E_A,E_B)\). We show that we can recover \(E_{AB}\) in polynomial time by using Coppersmith's method as long as the oracle outputs \(\ensuremath{\frac{13}{24}} + \varepsilon \approx 54\%\) (CSIDH) and \(\ensuremath{\frac{31}{41}} + \varepsilon \approx 76\%\) (CSURF) of the most significant bits of the \(\ensuremath{\mathsf{CDH}}\), where $\varepsilon > 0$ is an arbitrarily small constant. To this end, we give a purely combinatorial restatement of Coppersmith's method, effectively concealing the intricate aspects of lattice theory and allowing for near-complete automation. By leveraging this approach, we attain recovery attacks with $\varepsilon$ close to zero within a few minutes of computation.
2022
EUROCRYPT
Approximate Divisor Multiples - Factoring with Only a Third of the Secret CRT-Exponents 📺
Alexander May Julian Nowakowski Santanu Sarkar
We address Partial Key Exposure attacks on CRT-RSA on secret exponents $d_p, d_q$ with small public exponent $e$. For constant $e$ it is known that the knowledge of half of the bits of one of $d_p, d_q$ suffices to factor the RSA modulus $N$ by Coppersmith's famous {\em factoring with a hint} result. We extend this setting to non-constant $e$. Somewhat surprisingly, our attack shows that RSA with $e$ of size $N^{\frac 1 {12}}$ is most vulnerable to Partial Key Exposure, since in this case only a third of the bits of both $d_p, d_q$ suffices to factor $N$ in polynomial time, knowing either most significant bits (MSB) or least significant bits (LSB). Let $ed_p = 1 + k(p-1)$ and $ed_q = 1 + \ell(q-1)$. On the technical side, we find the factorization of $N$ in a novel two-step approach. In a first step we recover $k$ and $\ell$ in polynomial time, in the MSB case completely elementary and in the LSB case using Coppersmith's lattice-based method. We then obtain the prime factorization of $N$ by computing the root of a univariate polynomial modulo $kp$ for our known $k$. This can be seen as an extension of Howgrave-Graham's {\em approximate divisor} algorithm to the case of {\em approximate divisor multiples} for some known multiple $k$ of an unknown divisor $p$ of $N$. The point of {\em approximate divisor multiples} is that the unknown that is recoverable in polynomial time grows linearly with the size of the multiple $k$. Our resulting Partial Key Exposure attack with known MSBs is completely rigorous, whereas in the LSB case we rely on a standard Coppersmith-type heuristic. We experimentally verify our heuristic, thereby showing that in practice we reach our asymptotic bounds already using small lattice dimensions. Thus, our attack is highly practical.
2021
ASIACRYPT
Partial Key Exposure Attack on Short Secret Exponent CRT-RSA 📺
Alexander May Julian Nowakowski Santanu Sarkar
Let $(N,e)$ be an RSA public key, where $N=pq$ is the product of equal bitsize primes $p,q$. Let $d_p, d_q$ be the corresponding secret CRT-RSA exponents. Using a Coppersmith-type attack, Takayasu, Lu and Peng (TLP) recently showed that one obtains the factorization of $N$ in polynomial time, provided that $d_p, d_q \leq N^{0.122}$. Building on the TLP attack, we show the first {\em Partial Key Exposure} attack on short secret exponent CRT-RSA. Namely, let $N^{0.122} \leq d_p, d_q \leq N^{0.5}$. Then we show that a constant known fraction of the least significant bits (LSBs) of both $d_p, d_q$ suffices to factor $N$ in polynomial time. Naturally, the larger $d_p,d_q$, the more LSBs are required. E.g. if $d_p, d_q$ are of size $N^{0.13}$, then we have to know roughly a $\frac 1 5$-fraction of their LSBs, whereas for $d_p, d_q$ of size $N^{0.2}$ we require already knowledge of a $\frac 2 3$-LSB fraction. Eventually, if $d_p, d_q$ are of full size $N^{0.5}$, we have to know all of their bits. Notice that as a side-product of our result we obtain a heuristic deterministic polynomial time factorization algorithm on input $(N,e,d_p,d_q)$.

Coauthors

Alexander May (3)
Jonas Meers (1)
Santanu Sarkar (2)