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17 September 2025
Xinxin Gong, Qingju Wang, Yonglin Hao, Lin Jiao, Xichao Hu
Hila Dahari-Garbian, Ariel Nof, Luke Parker
Our protocol relies on linear-homomorphic encryptions and commitments over class groups. To obtain our result, we leverage the recent construction of an exponent-VRF (Boneh et al., Eurocrypt 2025) and a novel protocol to multiply an encrypted value with a committed value and simultaneously decrypt it, which we call "scaled decryption". We believe that this protocol may be of independent interest.
Our protocol has a very low communication cost of just 6.5 KB sent per party. Furthermore, we implemented our protocol in Rust and provide benchmarks for various configurations, showing its practicality even for 100 parties. Our implementation includes a constant-time variant which, to the best of our knowledge, is the first of its kind for class-group-based threshold ECDSA protocols.
Chris Brzuska, Michael Klooß, Ivy K. Y. Woo
We systematically develop what we view as minimal security properties for TPKE, formalise these into indistinguishability-based and simulation-based security notions, and establish implications and separations between different variants. One of our insights is that the common belief of maximal corruption implying the same security notion under fewer corruption is generally false, and the importance of partial decryptions on challenge ciphertexts is often neglected. Concretely, we design a (contrived) scheme which is CCA-simulation-secure under maximal corruptions, but not IND-CPA-secure under arbitrary corruptions. Our scheme is so that a random, initially hidden subset of $t-1$ parties can jointly decrypt and thus trivially insecure, but which can still be proven secure when partial decryption queries are disallowed.
To show that our security notions are achievable, we prove that threshold ElGamal (Desmedt-Frankel, 1989) achieves simulation-CPA-security under DDH, borrowing techniques from a concurrent work. We also revisit CPA-to-CCA transforms in the style of Naor and Yung (NY) and discover that, generically, NY does not upgrade CPA to CCA security for TPKE. We provide two alternatives: (1) We propose and construct a novel building block called non-interactive proofs of randomness (NIPoR) in the random oracle model, and show that NIPoR allows a generic CPA-to-CCA transform. (2) We show that assuming the stronger semi-malicious CPA security, NY-style techniques suffice to upgrade to CCA security.
Tarun Yadav, Shweta Singh, Sudha Yadav
Mary Maller, Nicolas Mohnblatt, Arantxa Zapico
To mitigate the theoretical challenges, we present the Open-and-Sign Random Oracle Model (osROM) as an extension to the signed random oracle of Chiesa and Tromer (ICS '10). This model, while strictly harder to instantiate than the Random Oracle Model, allows the design of protocols that can efficiently verify calls to the oracle and support straight-line extractors. As a result, IVC constructions in the osROM can be shown to have provable security for polynomial depths of computation.
Under our new model, we construct a framework to build secure IVC schemes from simple non-interactive reductions of knowledge. Our construction natively supports cycles of elliptic curves in the style of Ben-Sasson et al. (CRYPTO '14), thus answering the practical challenge outlined above. Finally, we analyze the HyperNova (CRYPTO '24) IVC scheme in the osROM and show that it is secure over a two-cycle of elliptic curves, for polynomial depths of computation.
MINKA MI NGUIDJOI Thierry Emmanuel
Andreas Wiemers
Xiaojie Guo, Hanlin Liu, Zhicong Huang, Hongrui Cui, Wenhao Zhang, Cheng Hong, Xiao Wang, Kang Yang, Yu Yu
1. We propose an efficient protocol that replaces the relaxed distributed comparison function in the best pseudorandom correlation function (PCF) for sVOLE (CRYPTO'22), which has the same streaming features for any polynomial number of tuples. With this protocol, our sPCG is doubly efficient in memory and the computation per sVOLE. Moreover, we augment the black-box distributed setup to malicious security and yield 4x communication improvement. Our sPCG can be extended to a more efficient sVOLE PCF with the same improvements in memory and computation, and a 2x faster malicious non-black-box distributed setup.
2. We present a practical attack on the Learning Parity with Noise (LPN) assumption for expand-accumulate codes with regular noise, revealing that some previous parameters provide around 14~22 bits of security over binary noises, far below the target 128 bits. To address this, we introduce a low-Hamming-weight noise distribution to withstand the attack. We then derive some updated LPN parameters with the new noise distribution, restoring 128-bit security and reducing the noise-related computation and communication.
3. We provide an implementation of our sPCG for the special case of correlated oblivious transfer (COT). In addition to the improvements over the best PCF, our sPCG can have a comparable end-to-end performance to Ferret (CCS'20) and the PCG from expand-convolute codes (CRYPTO'23), two state-of-the-art PCGs, with the advantage of being able to produce 10 million COTs on-the-fly and reducing the memory from 337 MB and 624 MB to 20 MB, respectively.
Zonglun Li, Wangze Ni, Shuhao Zheng, Junliang Luo, Weijie Sun, Lei Chen, Xue Liu, Tianhang Zheng, Zhan Qin, Kui Ren
Bowen Zhang, Hao Cheng, Johann Großschädl, Peter Y. A. Ryan
Eli Baum, Sam Buxbaum, Nitin Mathai, Muhammad Faisal, Vasiliki Kalavri, Mayank Varia, John Liagouris
We evaluate ORQ in LAN and WAN deployments on a diverse set of workloads, including complex queries with multiple joins and custom aggregations. When compared to state-of-the-art solutions, ORQ significantly reduces MPC execution times and can process one order of magnitude larger datasets. For our most challenging workload, the full TPC-H benchmark, we report results entirely under MPC with Scale Factor 10—a scale that had previously been achieved only with information leakage or the use of trusted third parties.
Suvradip Chakraborty, Sebastian Faller, Dennis Hofheinz, Kristina Hostáková
Zeyu Liu, Katerina Sotiraki, Eran Tromer, Yunhao Wang
In this work, we first show concrete attacks on existing lattice-based mmPKE schemes: Using maliciously-crafted recipient public keys, these attacks completely break semantic security and key privacy, and are inherently undetectable. We then introduce the first lattice-based mmKEM scheme that maintains full privacy even in the presence of maliciously-generated public keys. Concretely, the ciphertext size of our mmKEM for 100 recipients is $>10\times$ smaller than naively using Crystals-Kyber. We also show how to extend our mmKEM to mmPKE, achieving a scheme that outperforms all prior lattice-based mmPKE schemes in terms of both security and efficiency. We additionally show a similar efficiency gain when applied to batched random oblivious transfer, and to group oblivious message retrieval.
Our scheme is proven secure under a new Module-LWE variant assumption, Oracle Module-LWE, which can be of its own independent interest. We reduce standard MLWE to this new assumption for some parameter regimes, which also gives intuition on why this assumption holds for the parameter we are interested in (along with additional cryptanalysis).
Furthermore, we show an asymptotically efficient compiler that removes the assumption made in prior works that recipients know their position in the list of intended recipients for every ciphertext.
Yanqi Gu, Stanislaw Jarecki, Phillip Nazarian, Apurva Rai
Zesheng Li, Dongliang Cai, Yimeng Tian, Yihang Du, Xinxuan Zhang, Yi Deng
In this paper, we propose a novel distributed SNARK system constructed by compiling distributed PIOP with additively homomorphic polynomial commitment, rather than distributed polynomial commitment. The core technical component is distributed SumFold, which folds multiple sum-check instances into one. After the folding process, only one prover is required to perform polynomial commitment openings. It facilitates compilation with SamaritanPCS, which is a recently proposed additively homomorphic multilinear polynomial commitment scheme. The resulting SNARK system is specifically optimized for data-parallel circuits. Compared to prior HyperPlonk-based distributed proof systems (e.g., Hyperpianist and Cirrus), our construction achieves improvements in both proof size and prover time. We implement our protocol and conduct a comprehensive comparison with HyperPianist with 8 machines. Our system achieves shorter proof and 4.1~4.9× speedup in prover time, while maintaining comparable verification efficiency.
12 September 2025
ExeQuantum, Docklands, Melbourne (Remote-friendly for the right candidate)
ExeQuantum is a Melbourne-based company pioneering post-quantum cryptography (PQC) and sovereign-grade secure systems. We are working with critical industries and governments to deliver solutions that are sovereign, transparent, agile, and compliant. Our projects range from PQC-as-a-Service APIs to secure integrations in finance, healthcare, and national infrastructure.
We are looking for a Software Engineer to join our engineering team. This role reports directly to the CTO and will involve building prototypes into production-ready solutions across cryptography, email security, and payment infrastructure. This is not a generic coding role. You will be working on systems where discipline, confidentiality, and creativity matter as much as technical skill.
Responsibilities- Design, develop, and maintain secure software components (Python, Node.js, C/C++/Rust depending on project scope).
- Integrate PQC algorithms (ML-KEM, ML-DSA, HQC, FN-DSA, etc.) into real-world applications.
- Contribute to internal tools, SDKs, APIs, and add-ins (e.g., Outlook, payment gateways).
- Collaborate with the CTO on system design and architecture.
- Follow strict security and confidentiality practices.
- Participate in code reviews, testing, and documentation to ensure auditability and compliance.
- Open-mindedness and willingness to study cutting-edge technologies. Demonstrated ability to think outside the box and avoid “impossible” as a default answer.
- 3+ years of professional software development experience (startup or high-assurance sector preferred).
- Strong skills in at least one of: Python, Node.js/TypeScript, C/C++/Rust.
- Familiarity with cryptographic libraries, secure coding practices, or networking protocols is a plus.
- Comfort working with prototypes, debugging, and delivering solutions in ambiguous/problem-solving contexts.
- High standard of confidentiality and discipline in handling IP, code, and client data.
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Send your CV, links of your code repositories (GitHub, GitLab, etc.), and a short note about why you want to work on PQC and secure systems with ExeQuantum to raymond@exequantum.com.
More information: https://www.linkedin.com/hiring/jobs/4298309236/detail/
Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
- a highly competitive salary on par with lecturer (assistant professor) salaries in Australia,
- opportunities to collaborate with leading academic and industry experts in the related areas,
- opportunities to participate in international grant-funded projects,
- collaborative and friendly research environment,
- an opportunity to live/study in one of the most liveable and safest cities in the world.
Requirements. significant research experience in Lattice-Based Cryptography and/or Privacy-Enhancing Technologies is required. A strong mathematical background is highly desired. Some knowledge/experience in coding (for example, Python, C/C++, SageMath) is a plus. Candidates must have completed (or be about to complete within the next 8 months) a PhD degree in a relevant field.
How to apply. please first refer to mfesgin.github.io/supervision/ for more information about our team. Then, please fill out the following form (also clickable from the advertisement title): https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeU6O65yJQW3rrcAi4dzatBYPyWU7Y5otLPReHFPuQf8dtggw/viewform
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Muhammed Esgin
More information: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeU6O65yJQW3rrcAi4dzatBYPyWU7Y5otLPReHFPuQf8dtggw/viewform