International Association
for Cryptologic Research

Ever since the seminal work of Diffie and Hellman, cryptographic (cyclic) groups have served as a fundamental building block for constructing cryptographic schemes and protocols. The security of these constructions can often be based on the hardness of (cyclic) group-based computational assumptions. Then, the generic group model (GGM) has been studied as an idealized model (Shoup, EuroCrypt 1997), which justifies the hardness of many (cyclic) group-based assumptions and shows the limits of some group-based cryptosystems. We stress that, the importance of the length of group encoding, either in a concrete group-based construction or assumption, or in the GGM, has not been studied. In this work, we initiate a systematic study on the complexity of cryptographic groups and generic group models, varying in different lengths of group encodings, and demonstrate evidences that ``the length matters''. More concretely, we have the following results: -- We show that there is no black-box/relativizing reduction from the CDH-secure groups (i.e., over such groups, the computational Diffie-Hellman assumption holds) with shorter encodings, to the CDH-secure groups with longer encodings, within the same security parameter. More specifically, given any arbitrary longer CDH-secure group, it is impossible to generically shorten the group encoding and obtain a shorter CDH-secure group within the same group order. -- We show that there is a strict hierarchy of the GGMs with different lengths of encodings. That is, in the framework of indifferentiability, the shorter GGM is strictly stronger than the longer ones, even in the presence of computationally bounded adversaries.

The notion of Endemic Oblivious Transfer (EOT) was introduced by Masny and Rindal (CCS’19). EOT offers a weaker security guarantee than the conventional random OT; namely, the malicious parties can fix their outputs arbitrarily. The authors presented a 1-round UC-secure EOT protocol under a tailor-made and non-standard assumption, Choose-and-Open DDH, in the RO model. In this work, we systematically study EOT in the UC/GUC framework. We present a new 1-round UC-secure EOT construction in the RO model under the DDH assumption. Under the GUC framework, we propose the first 1-round EOT construction under the CDH assumption in the Global Restricted Observable RO (GroRO) model proposed by Canetti et al. (CCS’14). We also provide an impossibility result, showing there exist no 1-round GUC-secure EOT protocols in the Global Restricted Programmable RO (GrpRO) model proposed by Camenisch et al. (Eurocrypt’18). Subsequently, we provide the first round-optimal (2-round) EOT protocol with adaptive security under the DDH assumption in the GrpRO model. Finally, we investigate the relations between EOT and other cryptographic primitives. As side products, we present the first 2-round GUC-secure commitment in the GroRO model as well as a separation between the GroRO and the GrpRO models, which may be of independent interest.

The algebraic group model (AGM), formalized by Fuchsbauer, Kiltz, and Loss, has recently received significant attention. One of the appealing properties of the AGM is that it is viewed as being (strictly) weaker than the generic group model (GGM), in the sense that hardness results for algebraic algorithms imply hardness results for generic algorithms, and generic reductions in the AGM (namely, between the algebraic formulations of two problems) imply generic reductions in the~GGM. We highlight that as the GGM and AGM are currently formalized, this is not true: hardness in the AGM may not imply hardness in the GGM, and a generic reduction in the AGM may not imply a similar reduction in the~GGM.

In the UC framework, protocols must be subroutine respecting; therefore, shared trusted setup might cause security issues. To address this drawback, Generalized UC (GUC) framework is introduced by Canetti {\em et al.} (TCC 2007). In this work, we investigate the impossibility and feasibility of GUC-secure commitments using global random oracles (GRO) as the trusted setup. In particular, we show that it is impossible to have a 2-round (1-round committing and 1-round opening) GUC-secure commitment in the global observable RO model by Canetti {\em et al.} (CCS 2014). We then give a new round-optimal GUC-secure commitment that uses only Minicrypt assumptions (i.e. the existence of one-way functions) in the global observable RO model. Furthermore, we also examine the complete picture on round complexity of the GUC-secure commitments in various global RO models.

Mimblewimble is a privacy-preserving cryptocurrency, providing the functionality of transaction aggregation. Once certain coins have been spent in Mimblewimble, they can be deleted from the UTXO set. This is desirable: now storage can be saved and computation cost can be reduced. Fuchsbauer et al. (EUROCRYPT 2019) abstracted Mimblewimble as an Aggregate Cash System (ACS) and provided security analysis via game-based definitions. In this paper, we revisit the ACS, and focus on {\em Non-interactive} ACS, denoted as NiACS. We for the first time propose a simulation-based security definition and formalize an ideal functionality for NiACS. Then, we construct a NiACS protocol in a hybrid model which can securely realize the ideal NiACS functionality in the Universal Composition (UC) framework. In addition, we propose a building block, which is a variant of the ElGamal encryption scheme that may be of independent interest. Finally, we show how to instantiate our protocol, and obtain the first NiACS system with UC security.

Non-malleable codes, introduced as a relaxation of error-correcting codes by Dziembowski, Pietrzak, and Wichs (ICS ’10), provide the security guarantee that the message contained in a tampered codeword is either the same as the original message or is set to an unrelated value. Various applications of non-malleable codes have been discovered, and one of the most significant applications among these is the connection with tamper-resilient cryptography. There is a large body of work considering security against various classes of tampering functions, as well as non-malleable codes with enhanced features such as leakage resilience . In this work, we propose combining the concepts of non-malleability , leakage resilience , and locality in a coding scheme. The contribution of this work is threefold: 1. As a conceptual contribution, we define a new notion of locally decodable and updatable non-malleable code that combines the above properties. 2. We present two simple and efficient constructions achieving our new notion with different levels of security. 3. We present an important application of our new tool—securing RAM computation against memory tampering and leakage attacks. This is analogous to the usage of traditional non-malleable codes to secure implementations in the circuit model against memory tampering and leakage attacks.

We study how to construct secure digital signature schemes in the presence of kleptographic attacks. Our work utilizes an offline watchdog to clip the power of subversions via only one-time black-box testing of the implementation. Previous results essentially rely on an online watchdog which requires the collection of all communicating transcripts (or active re-randomization of messages).We first give a simple but generic construction, without random oracles, in the partial-subversion model in which key generation and signing algorithms can be subverted. Then, we give the first digital signature scheme in the complete-subversion model in which all cryptographic algorithms can be subverted. This construction is based on the full-domain hash. Along the way, we enhance the recent result of Russell et al.  (CRYPTO 2018) about correcting a subverted random oracle.

We continue the line of work initiated by Katz (Eurocrypt 2007) on using tamper-proof hardware tokens for universally composable secure computation. As our main result, we show an oblivious-transfer (OT) protocol in which two parties each create and transfer a single, stateless token and can then run an unbounded number of OTs. We also show a more efficient protocol, based only on standard symmetric-key primitives (block ciphers and collision-resistant hash functions), that can be used if a bounded number of OTs suffice. Motivated by this result, we investigate the number of stateless tokens needed for universally composable OT. We prove that our protocol is optimal in this regard for constructions making black-box use of the tokens (in a sense we define). We also show that nonblack-box techniques can be used to obtain a construction using only a single stateless token.

The literature on leakage-resilient cryptography contains various leakage models that provide different levels of security. In the bounded leakage model (Akavia et al.—TCC 2009 ), it is assumed that there is a fixed upper bound L on the number of bits the attacker may leak on the secret key in the entire lifetime of the scheme. Alternatively, in the continual leakage model (Brakerski et al.—FOCS 2010 , Dodis et al.—FOCS 2010 ), the lifetime of a cryptographic scheme is divided into “time periods” between which the scheme’s secret key is updated. Furthermore, in its attack the adversary is allowed to obtain some bounded amount of leakage on the current secret key during each time period. In the continual leakage model, a challenging problem has been to provide security against leakage on key updates , that is, leakage that is a function of not only the current secret key but also the randomness used to update it. We propose a modular approach to overcome this problem based on program obfuscation. Namely, we present a compiler that transforms any public key encryption or signature scheme that achieves a slight strengthening of continual leakage resilience, which we call consecutive continual leakage resilience, to one that is continual leakage resilient with leakage on key updates, assuming indistinguishability obfuscation (Barak et al.—CRYPTO 2001 , Garg et al.—FOCS 2013 ). Under stronger forms of obfuscation, the leakage rate tolerated by our compiled scheme is essentially as good as that of the starting scheme. Our compiler is derived by making a connection between the problems of leakage on key updates and so-called sender-deniable encryption (Canetti et al.—CRYPTO 1997 ), which was recently constructed based on indistinguishability obfuscation by Sahai and Waters (STOC 2014 ). In the bounded leakage model, we give an approach to constructing leakage-resilient public key encryption from program obfuscation based on the public key encryption scheme of Sahai and Waters (STOC 2014 ). In particular, we achieve leakage-resilient public key encryption tolerating L bits of leakage for any L from $${\mathsf {iO}} $$ iO and one-way functions. We build on this to achieve leakage-resilient public key encryption with optimal leakage rate of $$1-o(1)$$ 1 - o ( 1 ) based on stronger forms of obfuscation and collision-resistant hash functions. Such a leakage rate is not known to be achievable in a generic way based on public key encryption alone. We then develop additional techniques to construct public key encryption that is (consecutive) continual leakage resilient under appropriate assumptions, which we believe is of independent interest.

The random oracle methodology has proven to be a powerful tool for designing and reasoning about cryptographic schemes, and can often act as an effective bridge between theory and practice. In this paper, we focus on the basic problem of correcting faulty—or adversarially corrupted—random oracles, so that they can be confidently applied for such cryptographic purposes.We prove that a simple construction can transform a “subverted” random oracle—which disagrees with the original one at a negligible fraction of inputs—into a construction that is indifferentiable from a random function. Our results permit future designers of cryptographic primitives in typical kleptographic settings (i.e., with adversaries who may subvert the implementation of cryptographic algorithms but undetectable via blackbox testing) to use random oracles as a trusted black box, in spite of not trusting the implementation. Our analysis relies on a general rejection re-sampling lemma which is a tool of possible independent interest.

In this work, we develop a framework for building leakage-resilient cryptosystems in the bounded leakage model from puncturable primitives and indistinguishability obfuscation ( $$i\mathcal {O}$$ ). The major insight of our work is that various types of puncturable pseudorandom functions (PRFs) can achieve leakage resilience on an obfuscated street.First, we build leakage-resilient weak PRFs from weak puncturable PRFs and $$i\mathcal {O}$$ , which readily imply leakage-resilient secret-key encryption. Then, we build leakage-resilient publicly evaluable PRFs (PEPRFs) from puncturable PEPRFs and $$i\mathcal {O}$$ , which readily imply leakage-resilient key encapsulation mechanism and thus public-key encryption. As a building block of independent interest, we realize puncturable PEPRFs from either newly introduced puncturable objects such as puncturable trapdoor functions and puncturable extractable hash proof systems or existing puncturable PRFs with $$i\mathcal {O}$$ . Finally, we construct the first leakage-resilient public-coin signature from selective puncturable PRFs, leakage-resilient one-way functions and $$i\mathcal {O}$$ . This settles the open problem posed by Boyle, Segev, and Wichs (Eurocrypt 2011).By further assuming the existence of lossy functions, all the above constructions achieve optimal leakage rate of $$1 - o(1)$$ . Such a leakage rate is not known to be achievable for weak PRFs, PEPRFs and public-coin signatures before. This also resolves the open problem posed by Dachman-Soled, Gordon, Liu, O’Neill, and Zhou (PKC 2016, JOC 2018).