CryptoDB

Georg Fuchsbauer

Publications

Year
Venue
Title
2022
ASIACRYPT
The success of blockchains has led to ever-growing ledgers that are stored by all participating full nodes. In contrast, light clients only store small amounts of blockchain-related data and rely on the mediation of full nodes when interacting with the ledger. A broader adoption of blockchains calls for protocols that make this interaction trustless. We revisit the design of light-client blockchain protocols from the perspective of classical proof-system theory, and explain the role that proofs of sequential work (PoSWs) can play in it. To this end, we define a new primitive called succinct non-interactive argument of chain knowledge (SNACK), a non-interactive proof system that provides clear security guarantees to a verifier (a light client) even when interacting only with a single dishonest prover (a full node). We show how augmenting any blockchain with any graph-labeling PoSW (GL-PoSW) enables SNACK proofs for this blockchain. We also provide a unified and extended definition of GL-PoSWs covering all existing constructions, and describe two new variants. We then show how SNACKs can be used to construct light-client protocols, and highlight some deficiencies of existing designs, along with mitigations. Finally, we introduce incremental SNACKs which could potentially provide a new approach to light mining.
2022
ASIACRYPT
Mimblewimble is a cryptocurrency protocol that promises to overcome notorious blockchain scalability issues and provides user privacy. For a long time its wider adoption has been hindered by the lack of non-interactive transactions, that is, payments for which only the sender needs to be online. Yu proposed a way of adding non-interactive transactions to stealth addresses to Mimblewimble, but this turned out to be flawed. Building on Yu and integrating ideas from Burkett, we give a fixed scheme and provide a rigorous security analysis strenghtening the previous security model from Eurocrypt'19. Our protocol is considered for implementation by MimbleWimbleCoin and a variant is now deployed as MimbleWimble Extension Blocks (MWEB) in Litecoin.
2021
PKC
Transferable e-cash is the most faithful digital analog of physical cash, as it allows users to transfer coins between them in isolation, that is, without interacting with a bank or a ledger''. Appropriate protection of user privacy and, at the same time, providing means to trace fraudulent behavior (double-spending of coins) have made instantiating the concept notoriously hard. Baldimtsi et al.\ (PKC'15) gave a first instantiation, but, as it relies on a powerful cryptographic primitive, the scheme is not practical. We also point out a flaw in their scheme. In this paper we revisit the model for transferable e-cash and propose simpler yet stronger security definitions. We then provide the first concrete construction, based on bilinear groups, give rigorous proofs that it satisfies our model, and analyze its efficiency in detail.
2021
ASIACRYPT
The one more-discrete logarithm assumption (OMDL) underlies the security analysis of identification protocols, blind signature and multi-signature schemes, such as blind Schnorr signatures and the recent MuSig2 multi-signatures. As these schemes produce standard Schnorr signatures, they are compatible with existing systems, e.g. in the context of blockchains. OMDL is moreover assumed for many results on the impossibility of certain security reductions. Despite its wide use, surprisingly, OMDL is lacking any rigorous analysis; there is not even a proof that it holds in the generic group model (GGM). (We show that a claimed proof is flawed.) In this work we give a formal proof of OMDL in the GGM. We also prove a related assumption, the one-more computational Diffie-Hellman assumption, in the GGM. Our proofs deviate from prior GGM proofs and replace the use of the Schwartz-Zippel Lemma by a new argument.
2020
EUROCRYPT
The Schnorr blind signing protocol allows blind issuing of Schnorr signatures, one of the most widely used signatures. Despite its practical relevance, its security analysis is unsatisfactory. The only known security proof is informal and in the combination of the generic group model (GGM) and the random oracle model (ROM) assuming that the ROS problem'' is hard. The situation is similar for (Schnorr-)signed ElGamal encryption, a simple CCA2-secure variant of ElGamal. We analyze the security of these schemes in the algebraic group model (AGM), an idealized model closer to the standard model than the GGM. We first prove tight security of Schnorr signatures from the discrete logarithm assumption (DL) in the AGM+ROM. We then give a rigorous proof for blind Schnorr signatures in the AGM+ROM assuming hardness of the one-more discrete logarithm problem and ROS. As ROS can be solved in sub-exponential time using Wagner's algorithm, we propose a simple modification of the signing protocol, which leaves the signatures unchanged. It is therefore compatible with systems that already use Schnorr signatures, such as blockchain protocols. We show that the security of our modified scheme relies on the hardness of a problem related to ROS that appears much harder. Finally, we give tight reductions, again in the AGM+ROM, of the CCA2 security of signed ElGamal encryption to DDH and signed hashed ElGamal key encapsulation to DL.
2020
CRYPTO
We give a taxonomy of computational assumptions in the algebraic group model (AGM). We first analyze the Uber assumption family for bilinear groups defined by Boyen and then extend it in multiple ways to cover assumptions such as Gap Diffie-Hellman and the LRSW assumption. We show that in the AGM every member of these families reduces to the q-discrete logarithm (DL) problem, for some q that depends on the degrees of the polynomials defining the assumption. Using the meta-reduction technique, we then separate (q+1)-DL from q-DL, which thus yields a classification of all members of the extended Uber-assumption families. We finally show that there are strong assumptions, such as one-more DL, that provably fall outside our classification, as we prove that they cannot be reduced to q-DL even in the AGM.
2019
PKC
A proxy re-encryption (PRE) scheme is a public-key encryption scheme that allows the holder of a key pk to derive a re-encryption key for any other key $pk'$ . This re-encryption key lets anyone transform ciphertexts under pk into ciphertexts under $pk'$ without having to know the underlying message, while transformations from $pk'$ to pk should not be possible (unidirectional). Security is defined in a multi-user setting against an adversary that gets the users’ public keys and can ask for re-encryption keys and can corrupt users by requesting their secret keys. Any ciphertext that the adversary cannot trivially decrypt given the obtained secret and re-encryption keys should be secure.All existing security proofs for PRE only show selective security, where the adversary must first declare the users it wants to corrupt. This can be lifted to more meaningful adaptive security by guessing the set of corrupted users among the n users, which loses a factor exponential in , rendering the result meaningless already for moderate .Jafargholi et al. (CRYPTO’17) proposed a framework that in some cases allows to give adaptive security proofs for schemes which were previously only known to be selectively secure, while avoiding the exponential loss that results from guessing the adaptive choices made by an adversary. We apply their framework to PREs that satisfy some natural additional properties. Concretely, we give a more fine-grained reduction for several unidirectional PREs, proving adaptive security at a much smaller loss. The loss depends on the graph of users whose edges represent the re-encryption keys queried by the adversary. For trees and chains the loss is quasi-polynomial in the size and for general graphs it is exponential in their depth and indegree (instead of their size as for previous reductions). Fortunately, trees and low-depth graphs cover many, if not most, interesting applications.Our results apply e.g. to the bilinear-map based PRE schemes by Ateniese et al. (NDSS’05 and CT-RSA’09), Gentry’s FHE-based scheme (STOC’09) and the LWE-based scheme by Chandran et al. (PKC’14).
2019
EUROCRYPT
Mimblewimble is an electronic cash system proposed by an anonymous author in 2016. It combines several privacy-enhancing techniques initially envisioned for Bitcoin, such as Confidential Transactions (Maxwell, 2015), non-interactive merging of transactions (Saxena, Misra, Dhar, 2014), and cut-through of transaction inputs and outputs (Maxwell, 2013). As a remarkable consequence, coins can be deleted once they have been spent while maintaining public verifiability of the ledger, which is not possible in Bitcoin. This results in tremendous space savings for the ledger and efficiency gains for new users, who must verify their view of the system.In this paper, we provide a provable-security analysis for Mimblewimble. We give a precise syntax and formal security definitions for an abstraction of Mimblewimble that we call an aggregate cash system. We then formally prove the security of Mimblewimble in this definitional framework. Our results imply in particular that two natural instantiations (with Pedersen commitments and Schnorr or BLS signatures) are provably secure against inflation and coin theft under standard assumptions.
2019
TOSC
We study the security of symmetric primitives against key-correlated attacks (KCA), whereby an adversary can arbitrarily correlate keys, messages, and ciphertexts. Security against KCA is required whenever a primitive should securely encrypt key-dependent data, even when it is used under related keys. KCA is a strengthening of the previously considered notions of related-key attack (RKA) and key-dependent message (KDM) security. This strengthening is strict, as we show that 2-round Even–Mansour fails to be KCA secure even though it is both RKA and KDM secure. We provide feasibility results in the ideal-cipher model for KCAs and show that 3-round Even–Mansour is KCA secure under key offsets in the random-permutation model. We also give a natural transformation that converts any authenticated encryption scheme to a KCA-secure one in the random-oracle model. Conceptually, our results allow for a unified treatment of RKA and KDM security in idealized models of computation.
2019
JOFC
Structure-preserving signatures (SPS) are a powerful building block for cryptographic protocols. We introduce SPS on equivalence classes (SPS-EQ), which allow joint randomization of messages and signatures. Messages are projective equivalence classes defined on group-element vectors, so multiplying a vector by a scalar yields a different representative of the same class. Our scheme lets one adapt a signature for one representative to a signature for another representative without knowledge of any secret. Moreover, given a signature, an adapted signature for a different representative is indistinguishable from a fresh signature on a random message. We propose a definitional framework for SPS-EQ and an efficient construction in Type-3 bilinear groups, which we prove secure against generic forgers. We also introduce set-commitment schemes that let one open subsets of the committed set. From this and SPS-EQ, we then build an efficient multi-show attribute-based anonymous credential system for an arbitrary number of attributes. Our ABC system avoids costly zero-knowledge proofs and only requires a short interactive proof to thwart replay attacks. It is the first credential system whose bandwidth required for credential showing is independent of the number of its attributes, i.e., constant-size. We propose strengthened game-based security definitions for ABC and prove our scheme anonymous against malicious organizations in the standard model; finally, we discuss a concurrently secure variant in the CRS model.
2018
CRYPTO
One of the most important and successful tools for assessing hardness assumptions in cryptography is the Generic Group Model (GGM). Over the past two decades, numerous assumptions and protocols have been analyzed within this model. While a proof in the GGM can certainly provide some measure of confidence in an assumption, its scope is rather limited since it does not capture group-specific algorithms that make use of the representation of the group.To overcome this limitation, we propose the Algebraic Group Model (AGM), a model that lies in between the Standard Model and the GGM. It is the first restricted model of computation covering group-specific algorithms yet allowing to derive simple and meaningful security statements. To prove its usefulness, we show that several important assumptions, among them the Computational Diffie-Hellman, the Strong Diffie-Hellman, and the interactive LRSW assumptions, are equivalent to the Discrete Logarithm (DLog) assumption in the AGM. On the more practical side, we prove tight security reductions for two important schemes in the AGM to DLog or a variant thereof: the BLS signature scheme and Groth’s zero-knowledge SNARK (EUROCRYPT 2016), which is the most efficient SNARK for which only a proof in the GGM was known. Our proofs are quite simple and therefore less prone to subtle errors than those in the GGM.Moreover, in combination with known lower bounds on the Discrete Logarithm assumption in the GGM, our results can be used to derive lower bounds for all the above-mentioned results in the GGM.
2018
PKC
Subversion zero knowledge for non-interactive proof systems demands that zero knowledge (ZK) be maintained even when the common reference string (CRS) is chosen maliciously. SNARKs are proof systems with succinct proofs, which are at the core of the cryptocurrency Zcash, whose anonymity relies on ZK-SNARKs; they are also used for ZK contingent payments in Bitcoin.We show that under a plausible hardness assumption, the most efficient SNARK schemes proposed in the literature, including the one underlying Zcash and contingent payments, satisfy subversion ZK or can be made to at very little cost. In particular, we prove subversion ZK of the original SNARKs by Gennaro et al. and the almost optimal construction by Groth; for the Pinocchio scheme implemented in libsnark we show that it suffices to add 4 group elements to the CRS. We also argue informally that Zcash is anonymous even if its parameters were set up maliciously.
2018
PKC
Structure-preserving signatures on equivalence classes, or equivalence-class signatures for short (EQS), are signature schemes defined over bilinear groups whose messages are vectors of group elements. Signatures are perfectly randomizable and given a signature on a vector, anyone can derive a signature on any multiple of the vector; EQS thus sign projective equivalence classes. Applications of EQS include the first constant-size anonymous attribute-based credentials, efficient round-optimal blind signatures without random oracles and efficient access-control encryption.To date, the only existing instantiation of EQS is proven secure in the generic-group model. In this work we show that by relaxing the definition of unforgeability, which makes it efficiently verifiable, we can construct EQS from standard assumptions, namely the Matrix-Diffie-Hellman assumptions. We then show that our unforgeability notion is sufficient for most applications.
2017
PKC
2016
TCC
2016
ASIACRYPT
2016
JOFC
2015
TCC
2015
PKC
2015
CRYPTO
2015
CRYPTO
2014
PKC
2014
PKC
2014
ASIACRYPT
2011
PKC
2011
EUROCRYPT
2010
TCC
2010
CRYPTO

TCC 2020
PKC 2020
Crypto 2018
Eurocrypt 2018
PKC 2017
Asiacrypt 2017
Eurocrypt 2016
Asiacrypt 2016
PKC 2015
PKC 2012