International Association
for Cryptologic Research

Proxy re-encryption(PRE) is a primitive that is used to facilitate secure access delegation in the cloud. Proxy re-encryption allows a proxy server to transform ciphertexts encrypted under one user's public key to that under another user's public key without learning anything about the underlying message or the secret key. Over the years proxy re-encryption schemes have been proposed in different settings. In this paper we restrict our analysis to certificate based proxy re-encryption. The first CCA secure certificate based PRE without bilinear pairings was proposed by Lu and Li in Future Generation Computer Systems, 2016. In this paper we present a concrete attack on their scheme and prove that it is not CCA secure.

In this paper, we propose an automatic tool to search for optimal differential and linear trails in ARX ciphers. It's shown that a modulo addition can be divided into sequential small modulo additions with carry bit, which turns an ARX cipher into an S-box-like cipher. From this insight, we introduce the concepts of carry-bit-dependent difference distribution table (CDDT) and carry-bit-dependent linear approximation table (CLAT). Based on them, we give efficient methods to trace all possible output differences and linear masks of a big modulo addition, with returning their differential probabilities and linear correlations simultaneously. Then an adapted Matsui's algorithm is introduced, which can find the optimal differential and linear trails in ARX ciphers. Besides, the superiority of our tool's potency is also confirmed by experimental results for round-reduced versions of HIGHT and SPECK. More specifically, we find the optimal differential trails for up to 10 rounds of HIGHT, reported for the first time. We also find the optimal differential trails for 10, 12, 16, 8 and 8 rounds of SPECK32/48/64/96/128, and report the provably optimal differential trails for SPECK48 and SPECK64 for the first time. The optimal linear trails for up to 9 rounds of HIGHT are reported for the first time, and the optimal linear trails for 22, 13, 15, 9 and 9 rounds of SPECK32/48/64/96/128 are also found respectively. These results evaluate the security of HIGHT and SPECK against differential and linear cryptanalysis. Also, our tool is useful to estimate the security in the design of ARX ciphers.

Ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE) is a cryptographic technique known for ensuring fine-grained access control on encrypted data. However, one of the main drawbacks of CP-ABE is that the time required to decrypt the ciphertext is considerably expensive, since it grows with the complexity of access policy. Outsourcing partial decryption operations to the cloud eliminates the overheads for users, but it also inevitably increases the computational burden of the cloud. When millions of users are enjoying cloud computing services, it may cause huge congestion and latency.

In this paper, we propose a heuristic primitive called reverse outsourcing. Specifically, users outsource part of the decryption work to the cloud, which splits it up and dispatches each to different idle users. Idle users are those whos has some smart devices connected to the internet and not in use. It's like, the cloud employs many idle users to accomplish its own computing tasks. Then, we proposed a reverse outsourced CP-ABE scheme which provable secure under the BDBH assumptions.

We introduce a framework generalizing lattice reduction algorithms to module lattices in order to practically and efficiently solve the $\gamma$-Hermite Module-SVP problem over arbitrary cyclotomic fields. The core idea is to exploit the structure of the subfields for designing a doubly-recursive strategy of reduction: both recursive in the rank of the module and in the field we are working in. Besides, we demonstrate how to leverage the inherent symplectic geometry existing in the tower of fields to provide a significant speed-up of the reduction for rank two modules. The recursive strategy over the rank can also be applied to the reduction of Euclidean lattices, and we can perform a reduction in asymptotically almost the same time as matrix multiplication. As a byproduct of the design of these fast reductions, we also generalize to all cyclotomic fields and provide speedups for many previous number theoretical algorithms.

Quantitatively, we show that a module of rank 2 over a cyclotomic field of degree $n$ can be heuristically reduced within approximation factor $2^{\tilde{O}(n)}$ in time $\tilde{O}(n^2B)$, where $B$ is the bitlength of the entries. For $B$ large enough, this complexity shrinks to $\tilde{O}(n^{\log_2 3}B)$. This last result is particularly striking as it goes below the estimate of $n^2B$ swaps given by the classical analysis of the LLL algorithm using the so-called potential.

Finally, all this framework is fully parallelizable, and we provide a full implementation. We apply it to break multilinear cryptographic candidates on concrete proposed parameters. We were able to reduce matrices of dimension 4096 with 6675-bit integers in 4 days, which is more than a million times faster than previous state-of-the-art implementations. Eventually, we demonstrate a quasicubic time for the Gentry-Szydlo algorithm which finds a generator given the relative norm and a basis of an ideal. This algorithm is important in cryptanalysis and requires efficient ideal multiplications and lattice reductions; as such we can practically use it in dimension 1024.

This paper proposes a solution for implementing Confidential Assets on MimbleWimble, which allows users to issue and transfer multiple assets on a blockchain without showing transaction addresses, amounts, and asset types. We first introduce the basic principles of MimbleWimble and then describe the implementation in detail.

McEliece-like code-based key exchange mechanisms using QC-MDPC codes can reach IND-CPA security under hardness assumptions from coding theory, namely quasi-cyclic syndrome decoding and quasi-cyclic codeword finding. To reach higher security requirements, like IND-CCA security, it is necessary in addition to prove that the decoding failure rate (DFR) is negligible, for some decoding algorithm and a proper choice of parameters. Getting a formal proof of a low DFR is a difficult task. Instead, we propose to ensure this low DFR under some additional security assumption on the decoder. This assumption relates to the asymptotic behavior of the decoder and is supported by several other works. We define a new decoder, Backflip, which features a low DFR. We evaluate the Backflip decoder by simulation and extrapolate its DFR under the decoder security assumption. We also measure the accuracy of our simulation data, in the form of confidence intervals, using standard techniques from communication systems.

Maintaining privacy on the Internet with the presence of powerful adversaries such as nation-state attackers is a challenging topic, and the Tor project is currently the most important tool to protect against this threat. The circuit construction protocol (CCP) negotiates cryptographic keys for Tor circuits, which overlay TCP/IP by routing Tor cells over n onion routers. The current circuit construction protocol provides strong security guarantees such as forward secrecy by exchanging O(n^2) messages.

For several years it has been an open question if the same strong security guarantees could be achieved with less message overhead, which is desirable because of the inherent latency in overlay networks. Several publications described CCPs which require only O(n) message exchanges, but significantly reduce the security of the resulting Tor circuit. It was even conjectured that it is impossible to achieve both message complexity O(n) and forward secrecy immediately after circuit construction (so-called immediate forward secrecy).

Inspired by the latest advancements in zero round-trip time key exchange (0-RTT), we present a new CCP protocol Tor 0-RTT (T0RTT). Using modern cryptographic primitives such as puncturable encryption allow to achieve immediate forward secrecy using only O(n) messages. We implemented these new primitives to give a first indication of possible problems and how to overcome them in order to build practical CCPs with O(n) messages and immediate forward secrecy in the future.

We present a generalization of Maurer's unified zero-knowledge (UZK) protocol, namely a unified generic zero-knowledge (UGZK) construction. We prove the security of our UGZK protocol and discuss special cases. Compared to UZK, the new protocol allows to prove knowledge of a vector of secrets instead of only one secret. We also provide the reader with a hash variant of UGZK and the corresponding security analysis. Last but not least, we extend Cogliani \emph{et al.}'s lightweight authentication protocol by describing a new distributed unified authentication scheme suitable for wireless sensor networks and, more generally, the Internet of Things.

The functioning of blockchain networks can be analyzed and abstracted into simple properties that allow for their usage as blackboxes in cryptographic protocols. One such abstraction is that of the growth of the blockchain over time. In this work, we build on the analysis of Garay et al. to develop an interface of functions that allow us to predict which block a submitted transaction will be added by. For cross-chain applications, we develop similar prediction functions for submitting related transactions to multiple independent networks in parallel. We then define a general ``receipt functionality'' for blockchains that provides a proof, in the form of a short string, that a particular transaction was added to the blockchain. We use these tools to obtain an efficient solution to the Train-and-Hotel Problem, which asks for a cross-chain booking protocol that allows a user to atomically book a train ticket on one blockchain and a hotel room on another. We formally prove that our protocol satisfies atomicity and liveness. We further highlight the versatility of blockchain receipts by discussing their applicability to general cross-chain communication and multi-party computation. We then detail a construction of ``Proof-of-Work receipts'' for Proof-of-Work blockchains using efficient and compact zero-knowledge proofs for arithmetic circuits.

We initiate the systematic study of probabilistic proofs in relativized worlds. The goal is to understand, for a given oracle, if there exist "non-trivial" probabilistic proofs for checking deterministic or nondeterministic computations that make queries to the oracle.

This question is intimately related to a recent line of work that builds cryptographic primitives (e.g., hash functions) via constructions that are "friendly" to known probabilistic proofs. This improves the efficiency of probabilistic proofs for computations calling these primitives.

We prove that "non-trivial" probabilistic proofs relative to several natural oracles do not exist. Our results provide strong complexity-theoretic evidence that certain functionalities cannot be treated as black boxes, and thus investing effort to instantiate these functionalities via constructions tailored to known probabilistic proofs may be inherent.

In this paper we prove that embedding parity bits and other function outputs in share string enables us to construct a secret sharing scheme (over binary alphabet) robust against a resource bounded adversary. Constructing schemes robust against adversaries in higher complexity classes requires an increase in the share size and increased storage. By connecting secret sharing with the randomized decision tree of a Boolean function we construct a scheme which is robust against an infinitely powerful adversary while keeping the constructions in a very low complexity class, viz. $AC^0$. As an application, we construct a robust secret sharing scheme in $AC^0$ that can accommodate new participants (dynamically) over time. Our construction requires a new redistribution of secret shares and can accommodate a bounded number of new participants.

Classical secret sharing schemes are built on the assumptions that the number of participants and the access structure remain fixed over time. Evolving secret sharing addresses the question of accommodating new participants with changeable access structures. One goal of this article is to initiate the study of evolving secret sharing sharing such that both share generation and reconstruction algorithms can be implemented by $AC^0$ circuits. We give a concrete construction with some minor storage assumption. Furthermore, allowing certain trade-offs we consider the novel problem of robust redistribution of secret shares (in $AC^0$) in the spirit of dynamic access structure by suitably modifying a construction of Cheng-Ishai-Li (TCC $2017$). A naive solution to the problem is to increase the alphabet size. We avoid this by modifying shares of some of the old participants. This modification is also necessary to make newly added participant(s) non-redundant to the secret sharing scheme.

Differential branch number and linear branch number are critical for the security of symmetric ciphers. The recent trend in the designs like PRESENT block cipher, ASCON authenticated encryption shows that applying S-boxes that have nontrivial differential and linear branch number can significantly reduce the number of rounds. As we see in the literature that the class of 4 x 4 S-boxes have been well-analysed, however, a little is known about the n x n S-boxes for n >= 5. For instance, the complete classification of 5 x 5 affine equivalent S-boxes is still unknown. Therefore, it is challenging to obtain “the best” S-boxes with dimension >= 5 that can be used in symmetric cipher designs. In this article, we present a novel approach to construct S-boxes that identifies classes of n x n S-boxes (n = 5, 6) with differential branch number 3 and linear branch number 3, and ensures other cryptographic properties. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to report 6 x 6 S-boxes with linear branch number 3, differential branch number 3, and with other good cryptographic properties such as nonlinearity 24 and differential uniformity 4.

The problem of constructing effective statistical tests for random number generators (RNG) is considered. Currently, statistical tests for RNGs are a mandatory part of cryptographic information protection systems, but their effectiveness is mainly estimated based on experiments with various RNGs. We find an asymptotic estimate for the p-value of an optimal test in the case where the alternative hypothesis is a known stationary ergodic source, and then describe a family of tests each of which has the same asymptotic estimate of the p-value for any (unknown) stationary ergodic source.

Internet-of-Things enables interconnection of billions of devices, which perform autonomous operations and collect various types of data. These things, along with their generated huge amount of data, need to be handled efficiently and securely. Centralized solutions are not desired due to security concerns and scalability issue. In this paper, we propose HIBEChain, a hierarchical blockchain system that realizes scalable and accountable management of IoT devices and data. HIBEChain consists of multiple permissioned blockchains that form a hierarchical tree structure. To support the hierarchical structure of HIBEChain, we design a decentralized hierarchical identity-based signature (DHIBS) scheme, which enables IoT devices to use their identities as public keys. Consequently, HIBEChain achieves high scalability through parallel processing as blockchain sharding schemes, and it also implements accountability by use of identity-base keys. Identity-based keys not only make HIBEChain more user-friendly, they also allow private key recovery by validators when necessary. We provide detailed analysis of its security and performance, and implement HIBEChain based on Ethereum source code. Experiment results show that a 6-ary, (7,10)-threshold, 4-level HIBEChain can achieve 32,000 TPS, and it needs only 9 seconds to confirm a transaction.

We investigate constructing message authentication schemes from symmetric cryptographic primitives, with the goal of achieving security when most intermediate values during tag computation and verification are leaked (i.e., mode-level leakage-resilience). Existing efficient proposals typically follow the plain Hash-then-MAC paradigm $T=MAC_K(H(M))$. When the domain of the MAC function $MAC_K$ is $\{0,1\}^{128}$, e.g., when instantiated with the AES, forgery is possible within time $2^{64}$ and data complexity 1. To dismiss such cheap attacks, we propose two modes: LRW1-based Hash-then-MAC (LRWHM) that is built upon the LRW1 tweakable blockcipher of Liskov, Rivest, and Wagner, and Rekeying Hash-then-MAC (RHM) that employs internal rekeying. Built upon secure AES implementations, LRWHM is provably secure up to (beyond-birthday) $2^{78.3}$ time complexity, while RHM is provably secure up to $2^{121}$ time. Thus in practice, their main security threat is expected to be side-channel key recovery attacks against the AES implementations. Finally, we benchmark the performance of instances of our modes based on the AES and SHA3 and confirm their efficiency.

QC-MDPC code-based KEMs rely on decoders that have a small or even negligible Decoding Failure Rate (DFR). These decoders should be efficient and implementable in constant-time. One example for a QC-MDPC KEM is the Round-2 candidate of the NIST PQC standardization project, "BIKE". We have recently shown that the Black-Gray decoder achieves the required properties. In this paper, we deffine several new variants of the Black-Gray decoder. One of them, called Black-Gray-Flip, needs only 7 steps to achieve a smaller DFR than Black-Gray with 9 steps, for the same block size. On current AVX512 platforms, our BIKE-1 (Level-1) constant-time decapsulation is 1:9x faster than the previous decapsulation with Black-Gray. We also report an additional 1:25x decapsulating speedup using the new AVX512-VBMI2 and vector-PCLMULQDQ instructions available on "Ice-Lake" micro-architecture.

While there have been many successes in verifying cryptographic security proofs of noninter- active primitives such as encryption and signatures, less attention has been paid to interactive cryptographic protocols. Interactive protocols introduce the additional verification challenge of concurrency, which is notoriously hard to reason about in a cryptographically sound manner.

When proving the (approximate) observational equivalance of protocols, as is required by simulation based security in the style of Universal Composability (UC), a bisimulation is typically performed in order to reason about the nontrivial control flows induced by concurrency. Unfortunately, bisimulations are typically very tedious to carry out manually and do not capture the high-level intuitions which guide informal proofs of UC security on paper. Because of this, there is currently a large gap of formality between proofs of cryptographic protocols on paper and in mechanized theorem provers.

We work towards closing this gap through a new methodology for iteratively constructing bisimulations in a manner close to on-paper intuition. We present this methodology through Interactive Probabilistic Dependency Logic (IPDL), a simple calculus and proof system for specifying and reasoning about (a certain subclass of) distributed probabilistic computations. The IPDL framework exposes an equational logic on protocols; proofs in our logic consist of a number of rewriting rules, each of which induce a single low-level bisimulation between protocols.

We show how to encode simulation-based security in the style of UC in our logic, and evaluate our logic on a number of case studies; most notably, a semi-honest secure Oblivious Transfer protocol, and a simple multiparty computation protocol robust to Byzantine faults. Due to the novel design of our logic, we are able to deliver mechanized proofs of protocols which we believe are comprehensible to cryptographers without verification expertise. We provide a mechanization in Coq of IPDL and all case studies presented in this work.

This paper describes a vulnerability in Apple's CoreCrypto library, which affects 11 out of the 12 implemented hash functions: every implemented hash function except MD2 (Message Digest 2), as well as several higher-level operations such as the Hash-based Message Authentication Code (HMAC) and the Ed25519 signature scheme. The vulnerability is present in each of Apple's CoreCrypto libraries that are currently validated under FIPS 140-2 (Federal Information Processing Standard). For inputs of about $2^{32}$ bytes (4 GiB) or more, the implementations do not produce the correct output, but instead enter into an infinite loop. The vulnerability shows a limitation in the Cryptographic Algorithm Validation Program (CAVP) of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which currently does not perform tests on hash functions for inputs larger than 65 535 bits. To overcome this limitation of NIST's CAVP, we introduce a new test type called the Large Data Test (LDT). The LDT detects vulnerabilities similar to that in CoreCrypto in implementations submitted for validation under FIPS 140-2.

A shuffle argument is a cryptographic primitive for proving correct behaviour of mix-networks without leaking any private information. Several recent constructions of non-interactive shuffle arguments avoid the random oracle model but require the public key to be trusted.

We augment the most efficient argument by Fauzi et al. [Asiacrypt 2017] with a distributed key generation protocol that assures soundness of the argument if at least one party in the protocol is honest and additionally provide a key verification algorithm which guarantees zero-knowledge even if all the parties are malicious. Furthermore, we simplify their construction and improve security by using weaker assumptions while retaining roughly the same level of efficiency. We also provide an implementation to the distributed key generation protocol and the shuffle argument.