## CryptoDB

### Pooya Farshim

#### Publications

Year
Venue
Title
2021
EUROCRYPT
How does the cryptanalytic effort needed to compromise t out of m instances of hashed passwords scale with the number of users when arbitrary preprocessing information on the hash function is available? We provide a formal treatment of this problem in the multi-instance setting with auxiliary information. A central contribution of our work is an (arguably simple) transcript-counting argument that allows us to resolve a fundamental question left open by Bellare, Ristenpart, and Tessaro (BRT; CRYPTO 2012) in multi-instance security. We leverage this proof technique to formally justify unrecoverability of hashed salted passwords in the presence of auxiliary information in the random-oracle model. To this end we utilize the recent pre-sampling techniques for dealing with auxiliary information developed by Coretti et al. (CRYPTO 2018). Our bounds closely match those commonly assumed in practice. Besides hashing of passwords through a monolithic random oracle, we consider the effect of iteration, a technique that is used in classical mechanisms, such as bcrypt and PBKDF2, to slow down the rate of guessing. Building on the work of BRT, we formulate a notion of KDF security, also in the presence of auxiliary information, and prove an appropriate composition theorem for it.
2020
JOFC
We provide constructions of multilinear groups equipped with natural hard problems from indistinguishability obfuscation, homomorphic encryption, and NIZKs. This complements known results on the constructions of indistinguishability obfuscators from multilinear maps in the reverse direction. We provide two distinct, but closely related constructions and show that multilinear analogues of the ${\text {DDH}}$ DDH assumption hold for them. Our first construction is symmetric and comes with a $\kappa$ κ -linear map $\mathbf{e }: {{\mathbb {G}}}^\kappa \longrightarrow {\mathbb {G}}_T$ e : G κ ⟶ G T for prime-order groups ${\mathbb {G}}$ G and ${\mathbb {G}}_T$ G T . To establish the hardness of the $\kappa$ κ -linear ${\text {DDH}}$ DDH problem, we rely on the existence of a base group for which the $\kappa$ κ -strong ${\text {DDH}}$ DDH assumption holds. Our second construction is for the asymmetric setting, where $\mathbf{e }: {\mathbb {G}}_1 \times \cdots \times {\mathbb {G}}_{\kappa } \longrightarrow {\mathbb {G}}_T$ e : G 1 × ⋯ × G κ ⟶ G T for a collection of $\kappa +1$ κ + 1 prime-order groups ${\mathbb {G}}_i$ G i and ${\mathbb {G}}_T$ G T , and relies only on the 1-strong ${\text {DDH}}$ DDH assumption in its base group. In both constructions, the linearity $\kappa$ κ can be set to any arbitrary but a priori fixed polynomial value in the security parameter. We rely on a number of powerful tools in our constructions: probabilistic indistinguishability obfuscation, dual-mode NIZK proof systems (with perfect soundness, witness-indistinguishability, and zero knowledge), and additively homomorphic encryption for the group $\mathbb {Z}_N^{+}$ Z N + . At a high level, we enable “bootstrapping” multilinear assumptions from their simpler counterparts in standard cryptographic groups and show the equivalence of PIO and multilinear maps under the existence of the aforementioned primitives.
2020
TCC
In the backdoored random-oracle (BRO) model, besides access to a random function $\hash$, adversaries are provided with a backdoor oracle that can compute arbitrary leakage functions $f$ of the function table of $\hash$. Thus, an adversary would be able to invert points, find collisions, test for membership in certain sets, and more. This model was introduced in the work of Bauer, Farshim, and Mazaheri (Crypto 2018) and extends the auxiliary-input idealized models of Unruh (Crypto 2007), Dodis, Guo, and Katz (Eurocrypt 2017), Coretti et al. (Eurocrypt 2018), and Coretti, Dodis, and Guo (Crypto~2018). It was shown that certain security properties, such as one-wayness, pseudorandomness, and collision resistance can be re-established by combining two independent BROs, even if the adversary has access to both backdoor oracles. In this work we further develop the technique of combining two or more independent BROs to render their backdoors useless in a more general sense. More precisely, we study the question of building an \emph{indifferentiable} and backdoor-free random function by combining multiple BROs. Achieving full indifferentiability in this model seems very challenging at the moment. We however make progress by showing that the xor combiner goes well beyond security against preprocessing attacks and offers indifferentiability as long as the adaptivity of queries to different backdoor oracles remains logarithmic in the input size of the BROs. We even show that an extractor-based combiner of three BROs can achieve indifferentiability with respect to a linear adaptivity of backdoor queries. Furthermore, a natural restriction of our definition gives rise to a notion of \emph{indifferentiability with auxiliary input}, for which we give two positive feasibility results. To prove these results we build on and refine techniques by Göös et al. (STOC 2015) and Kothari et al. (STOC 2017) for decomposing distributions with high entropy into distributions with more structure and show how they can be applied in the more involved adaptive settings.
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.
2018
CRYPTO
We formulate and study the security of cryptographic hash functions in the backdoored random-oracle (BRO) model, whereby a big brother designs a “good” hash function, but can also see arbitrary functions of its table via backdoor capabilities. This model captures intentional (and unintentional) weaknesses due to the existence of collision-finding or inversion algorithms, but goes well beyond them by allowing, for example, to search for structured preimages. The latter can easily break constructions that are secure under random inversions.BROs make the task of bootstrapping cryptographic hardness somewhat challenging. Indeed, with only a single arbitrarily backdoored function no hardness can be bootstrapped as any construction can be inverted. However, when two (or more) independent hash functions are available, hardness emerges even with unrestricted and adaptive access to all backdoor oracles. At the core of our results lie new reductions from cryptographic problems to the communication complexities of various two-party tasks. Along the way we establish a communication complexity lower bound for set-intersection for cryptographically relevant ranges of parameters and distributions and where set-disjointness can be easy.
2018
CRYPTO
We study Authenticated Encryption with Associated Data (AEAD) from the viewpoint of composition in arbitrary (single-stage) environments. We use the indifferentiability framework to formalize the intuition that a “good” AEAD scheme should have random ciphertexts subject to decryptability. Within this framework, we can then apply the indifferentiability composition theorem to show that such schemes offer extra safeguards wherever the relevant security properties are not known, or cannot be predicted in advance, as in general-purpose crypto libraries and standards.We show, on the negative side, that generic composition (in many of its configurations) and well-known classical and recent schemes fail to achieve indifferentiability. On the positive side, we give a provably indifferentiable Feistel-based construction, which reduces the round complexity from at least 6, needed for blockciphers, to only 3 for encryption. This result is not too far off the theoretical optimum as we give a lower bound that rules out the indifferentiability of any construction with less than 2 rounds.
2018
PKC
We construct a graded encoding scheme (GES), an approximate form of graded multilinear maps. Our construction relies on indistinguishability obfuscation, and a pairing-friendly group in which (a suitable variant of) the strong Diffie–Hellman assumption holds. As a result of this abstract approach, our GES has a number of advantages over previous constructions. Most importantly: We can prove that the multilinear decisional Diffie–Hellman (MDDH) assumption holds in our setting, assuming the used ingredients are secure (in a well-defined and standard sense). Hence, our GES does not succumb to so-called “zeroizing” attacks if the underlying ingredients are secure.Encodings in our GES do not carry any noise. Thus, unlike previous GES constructions, there is no upper bound on the number of operations one can perform with our encodings. Hence, our GES essentially realizes what Garg et al. (EUROCRYPT 2013) call the “dream version” of a GES. Technically, our scheme extends a previous, non-graded approximate multilinear map scheme due to Albrecht et al. (TCC 2016-A). To introduce a graded structure, we develop a new view of encodings at different levels as polynomials of different degrees.
2017
TOSC
We study the security of symmetric primitives under the incorrect usage of keys. Roughly speaking, a key-robust scheme does not output ciphertexts/tags that are valid with respect to distinct keys. Key-robustness is a notion that is often tacitly expected/assumed in protocol design — as is the case with anonymous auction, oblivious transfer, or public-key encryption. We formalize simple, yet strong definitions of key robustness for authenticated-encryption, message-authentication codes and PRFs. We show standard notions (such as AE or PRF security) guarantee a basic level of key-robustness under honestly generated keys, but fail to imply keyrobustness under adversarially generated (or known) keys. We show robust encryption and MACs compose well through generic composition, and identify robust PRFs as the main primitive used in building robust schemes. Standard hash functions are expected to satisfy key-robustness and PRF security, and hence suffice for practical instantiations. We however provide further theoretical justifications (in the standardmodel) by constructing robust PRFs from (left-and-right) collision-resistant PRGs.
2017
TOSC
The iterated Even–Mansour (EM) ciphers form the basis of many blockcipher designs. Several results have established their security in the CPA/CCA models, under related-key attacks, and in the indifferentiability framework. In this work, we study the Even–Mansour ciphers under key-dependent message (KDM) attacks. KDM security is particularly relevant for blockciphers since non-expanding mechanisms are convenient in setting such as full disk encryption (where various forms of key-dependency might exist). We formalize the folklore result that the ideal cipher is KDM secure. We then show that EM ciphers meet varying levels of KDM security depending on the number of rounds and permutations used. One-round EM achieves some form of KDM security, but this excludes security against offsets of keys. With two rounds we obtain KDM security against offsets, and using different round permutations we achieve KDM security against all permutation-independent claw-free functions. As a contribution of independent interest, we present a modular framework that can facilitate the security treatment of symmetric constructions in models that allow for correlated inputs.
2016
TCC
2016
FSE
2015
EPRINT
2015
EPRINT
2015
TCC
2015
FSE
2015
FSE
2014
CRYPTO
2014
EPRINT
2014
EPRINT
2014
FSE
2013
PKC
2013
PKC
2013
EUROCRYPT
2011
FSE
2011
ASIACRYPT
2008
JOFC
2008
EPRINT
Certificateless cryptography achieves the best of the two worlds: it inherits from identity-based techniques a solution to the certificate management problem in public-key encryption, whilst removing the secret key escrow functionality inherent to the identity-based setting. Signcryption schemes achieve confidentiality and authentication simultaneously by combining public-key encryption and digital signatures, offering better overall performance and security. In this paper, we introduce the notion of certificateless signcryption and present an efficient construction which guarantees security under insider attacks, and therefore provides forward secrecy and non-repudiation. The scheme is shown to be secure using random oracles under a variant of the bilinear Diffie-Hellman assumption.
2006
EPRINT
Following the work of Al-Riyami et al. we define the notion of key encapsulation mechanism supporting cryptographic workflow (WF-KEM) and prove a KEM-DEM composition theorem which extends the notion of hybrid encryption to cryptographic workflow. We then generically construct a WF-KEM from an identity-based encryption (IBE) scheme and a secret sharing scheme. Chosen ciphertext security is achieved using one-time signatures. Adding a public-key encryption scheme we are able to modify the construction to obtain escrow-freeness. We prove all our constructions secure in the standard model.
2005
EPRINT
We extend the concept of key encapsulation mechanisms to the primitives of ID-based and certificateless encryption. We show that the natural combination of ID-KEMs or CL-KEMs with data encapsulation mechanisms results in encryption schemes which are secure in a strong sense. In addition, we give generic constructions of ID-KEMs and CL-KEMs, as well as specific instantiations, which are provably secure.
2005
EPRINT
We introduce the concept of identity based key encapsulation to multiple parties (mID-KEM), and define a security model for it. This concept is the identity based analogue of public key KEM to multiple parties. We also analyse possible mID-KEM constructions, and propose an efficient scheme based on bilinear pairings. We prove our scheme secure in the random oracle model under the Gap Bilinear Diffie-Hellman assumption.

Crypto 2020
Crypto 2018
Eurocrypt 2016