International Association for Cryptologic Research

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2014-11-21
10:17 [Pub][ePrint]

The simplicity and widespread use of blockciphers based on the iterated Even--Mansour (EM) construction has sparked recent interest in the theoretical study of their security. Previous work has established their strong pseudorandom permutation and indifferentiability properties, with some matching lower bounds presented to demonstrate tightness. In this work we initiate the study of the EM ciphers under related-key attacks which, despite extensive prior work, has received little attention. We show that the simplest one-round EM cipher is strong enough to achieve non-trivial levels of RKA security even under chosen-ciphertext attacks. This class, however, does not include the practically relevant case of offsetting keys by constants. We show that two rounds suffice to reach this level under chosen-plaintext attacks and that three rounds can boost security to resist chosen-ciphertext attacks. We also formalize how indifferentiability relates to RKA security, showing strong positive results despite counterexamples presented for indifferentiability in multi-stage games.

2014-11-20
22:01 [Conf][AC]

The proceedings for Asiacrypt 2014 are now available from Springer. As a reminder, all IACR proceedings in the last 4 years are freely available online to IACR members. To access them, simply enter your IACR credentials at http://www.iacr.org/services/springer.php

21:00 [Job][New]

The position arises from a recently awarded joint project with the University of Nancy and ENS Cachin Paris. The postdoc position involves the study of process equivalences to model the security of protocols employing weak secrets, such as voting and password based protocols.

Further details on these positions and their requirements are available at the following urls:

http://emea3.mrted.ly/ixsw

The research will be conducted at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) in the research group ApSIA (Applied Security and Information Assurance) headed by Prof. Dr. Peter Y.A Ryan. Contact Prof Ryan, peter.ryan (at) uni.lu, for more information.

The University offers highly competitive salaries and is an equal opportunity employer.

19:17 [Pub][ePrint]

Cryptographic primitives based on infinite families of progressively weaker assumptions have been proposed by Hofheinz-Kiltz and by Shacham (the n-Linear assumptions) and by Escala et al. (the Matrix Diffie-Hellman assumptions). All of these assumptions are extensions of the decisional Diffie-Hellman (DDH) assumption. In contrast, in this paper, we construct (additive) homomorphic encryption (HE) schemes based on a new infinite family of assumptions extending the decisional Composite Residuosity (DCR) assumption. This is the first result on a primitive based on an infinite family of progressively weaker assumptions not originating from the DDH assumption. Our assumptions are indexed by rooted trees, and provides a completely different structure compared to the previous extensions of the DDH assumption.

Our construction of a HE scheme is generic; based on a tree structure, we recursively combine copies of building-block HE schemes associated to each leaf of the tree (e.g., the Paillier cryptosystem, for our DCR-based result mentioned above). Our construction for depth-one trees utilizes the \"share-then-encrypt\" multiple encryption paradigm, modified appropriately to ensure security of the resulting HE schemes. We prove several separations between the CPA security of our HE schemes based on different trees; for example, the existence of an adversary capable of breaking all schemes based on depth-one trees, does not imply an adversary against our scheme based on a depth-two tree (within a computational model analogous to the generic group model). Moreover, based on our results, we give an example which reveals a type of \"non-monotonicity\" for security of generic constructions of cryptographic schemes and their building-block primitives; if the building-block primitives for a scheme are replaced with other ones secure under stronger assumptions, it may happen that the resulting scheme becomes secure under a weaker assumption than the original.

19:17 [Pub][ePrint]

Pseudorandom generators, which produce keystreams for stream ciphers by the exclusive-or sum of output bits from alternately clocked linear feedback shift registers, are vulnerable to cryptanalysis. In order to increase their resistance to attacks, we introduce a nonlinear scrambler at the output of these generators. The role of the scrambler plays the nonlinear feedback shift register. In addition, we propose the Modified Alternating Step Generator (MASG1S) built with the nonlinear scrambler and regularly or irregularly clocked linear feedback shift registers with nonlinear filtering functions.

2014-11-19
23:51 [Job][New]

The Institute for Quantum Computing and the Centre for Applied Cryptographic Research at the University of Waterloo seek qualified applicants for postdoctoral fellowships and graduate student positions in post-quantum cryptography, in particular in public-key cryptography based on computational assumptions believed to be secure against quantum computers (e.g. systems based on lattices, error-correcting codes codes, multivariate functions, elliptic curve isogenies, and also signature schemes based on hash-functions).

Projects may include studying new attacks (classical or quantum) on proposed systems, improved implementation methods for such systems, and reductions or equivalences between candidate post-quantum systems.

Successful applications will join a broad team of leading researchers in quantum computing and applied cryptography. They will also be able to take advantage of the CryptoWorks21 supplementary training program, which develops the technical and professional skills and knowledge needed to create cryptographic solutions that will be safe in a world with quantum computing technologies.

13:17 [Pub][ePrint]

At ASIACRYPT\'14 Hanser and Slamanig proposed a new primitive called structure-preserving signatures on equivalence classes (SPS-EQ) and used it to construct very efficient attribute-based anonymous credentials. They also presented a candidate construction of an SPS-EQ scheme and claimed that the scheme was existentially unforgeable under adaptive chosen message attacks (EUF-CMA). Fuchsbauer has however recently shown that the construction is insecure under adaptive queries and consequently the security claim is invalid. We fix this issue by providing an EUF-CMA-secure construction of an SPS-EQ, which is also more efficient than the original construction in every respect. We prove our scheme secure in the generic group model for Type-3 bilinear groups.

13:17 [Pub][ePrint]

SHA-2 (SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384 and SHA-512) is hash function family issued by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 2002 and is widely used all over the world. In this work, we analyze the security of SHA-512 with respect to boomerang attack. Boomerang distinguisher on SHA-512 compression function reduced to 48 steps is proposed, with a practical complexity of $2^{51}$. A practical example of the distinguisher for 48-step SHA-512 is also given. As far as we know, it is the best practical attack on step-reduced SHA-512.

13:17 [Pub][ePrint]

This paper presents a new fast public key cryptosystem namely : A key exchange algorithm, a public key encryption algorithm and a digital signature algorithm, based on a the difficulty to invert the following function :

$F(X) =(A\\times X)Mod(2^r)Div(2^s)$ .\\\\* Mod is modulo operation , Div is integer division operation , A , r and s are known natural numbers while $( r > s )$ .\\\\* In this paper it is also proven that this problem is equivalent to SAT problem which is NP complete .

13:17 [Pub][ePrint]

The last several years have witnessed a surge of activity in

lightweight cryptographic design. Many lightweight block ciphers have

been proposed, targeted mostly at hardware applications. Typically software performance has not been a priority, and consequently software

performance for many of these algorithms is unexceptional. SIMON and

SPECK are lightweight block cipher families developed by the U.S. National Security Agency for high performance in constrained hardware and software environments. In this paper, we discuss software performance and demonstrate how to achieve high performance implementations of SIMON and SPECK on the AVR family of 8-bit microcontrollers. Both ciphers compare favorably to other lightweight block ciphers on this platform. Indeed, SPECK seems to have better overall performance than any existing block cipher --- lightweight or not.

13:17 [Pub][ePrint]

When analyzing lattice based cryptosystems, we often need to solve the Shortest Vector Problem (SVP) in some lattice associated to the system under scrutiny. The go-to algorithms in practice to solve SVP are enumeration algorithms, which usually consist of a preprocessing step, followed by an exhaustive search. Obviously, the two steps offer a trade-off and should be balanced in their running time in order to minimize the overall complexity. In practice, the most common approach to control this trade-off is to use block reduction algorithms during the preprocessing. Despite the popularity of this approach, it lacks any well founded analysis and all practical approaches seem to use ad hoc parameters. This weakens our confidence in the cryptanalysis of the systems. In this work, we aim to shed light on at least one side of this trade-off and analyze the effect of block reduction on the exhaustive search. For this, we give asymptotic worst case bounds and presents results from both experiments and simulation that show its average case behavior in practice.