## CryptoDB

### Pavel Hubáček

#### Publications

Year
Venue
Title
2022
CRYPTO
A proof of exponentiation (PoE) in a group G of unknown order allows a prover to convince a verifier that a tuple (x, q, T, y) ∈G × N × N × G satisfies x^q^T= y. This primitive has recently found exciting applications in the constructions of verifiable delay functions and succinct arguments of knowledge. The most practical PoEs only achieve soundness either under computational assumptions, i.e., they are arguments (Wesolowski, Journal of Cryptology 2020), or in groups that come with the promise of not having any small subgroups (Pietrzak, ITCS 2019). The only statistically-sound PoE in general groups of unknown order is due to Block et al. (CRYPTO 2021), and can be seen as an elaborate parallel repetition of Pietrzak’s PoE: to achieve λ bits of security, say λ = 80, the number of repetitions required (and thus the blow-up in communication) is as large as λ. In this work we propose a statistically-sound PoE for the case where the exponent q is the product of all primes up to some bound B. We show that, in this case, it suffices to run only λ/ log(B) parallel instances of Pietrzak’s PoE, which reduces the concrete proof-size compared to Block et al. by an order of magnitude. Furthermore, we show that in the known applications where PoEs are used as a building block such structured exponents are viable. Finally, we also discuss batching of our PoE, showing that many proofs (for the same G and q but different x and T) can be batched by adding only a single element to the proof per additional statement.
2020
TCC
The complexity class TFNP consists of all NP search problems that are total in the sense that a solution is guaranteed to exist for all instances. Over the years, this class has proved to illuminate surprising connections among several diverse subfields of mathematics like combinatorics, computational topology, and algorithmic game theory. More recently, we are starting to better understand its interplay with cryptography. We know that certain cryptographic primitives (e.g. one-way permutations, collision-resistant hash functions, or indistinguishability obfuscation) imply average-case hardness in TFNP and its important subclasses. However, its relationship with the most basic cryptographic primitive -- \ie one-way functions (OWFs) -- still remains unresolved. Under an additional complexity theoretic assumption, OWFs imply hardness in TFNP (Hubá?ek, Naor, and Yogev, ITCS 2017). It is also known that average-case hardness in most structured subclasses of TFNP does not imply any form of cryptographic hardness in a black-box way (Rosen, Segev, and Shahaf, TCC 2017) and, thus, one-way functions might be sufficient. Specifically, no negative result which would rule out basing average-case hardness in TFNP \emph{solely} on OWFs is currently known. In this work, we further explore the interplay between TFNP and OWFs and give the first negative results. As our main result, we show that there cannot exist constructions of average-case (and, in fact, even worst-case) hard TFNP problem from OWFs with a certain type of simple black-box security reductions. The class of reductions we rule out is, however, rich enough to capture many of the currently known cryptographic hardness results for TFNP. Our results are established using the framework of black-box separations (Impagliazzo and Rudich, STOC 1989) and involve a novel application of the reconstruction paradigm (Gennaro and Trevisan, FOCS 2000).
2019
TCC
Oblivious RAM (ORAM), introduced in the context of software protection by Goldreich and Ostrovsky [JACM’96], aims at obfuscating the memory access pattern induced by a RAM computation. Ideally, the memory access pattern of an ORAM should be independent of the data being processed. Since the work of Goldreich and Ostrovsky, it was believed that there is an inherent $\varOmega (\log n)$ bandwidth overhead in any ORAM working with memory of size n. Larsen and Nielsen [CRYPTO’18] were the first to give a general $\varOmega (\log n)$ lower bound for any online ORAM, i.e., an ORAM that must process its inputs in an online manner.In this work, we revisit the lower bound of Larsen and Nielsen, which was proved under the assumption that the adversarial server knows exactly which server accesses correspond to which input operation. We give an $\varOmega (\log n)$ lower bound for the bandwidth overhead of any online ORAM even when the adversary has no access to this information. For many known constructions of ORAM this information is provided implicitly as each input operation induces an access sequence of roughly the same length. Thus, they are subject to the lower bound of Larsen and Nielsen. Our results rule out a broader class of constructions and specifically, they imply that obfuscating the boundaries between the input operations does not help in building a more efficient ORAM.As our main technical contribution and to handle the lack of structure, we study the properties of access graphs induced naturally by the memory access pattern of an ORAM computation. We identify a particular graph property that can be efficiently tested and that all access graphs of ORAM computation must satisfy with high probability. This property is reminiscent of the Larsen-Nielsen property but it is substantially less structured; that is, it is more generic.
2018
EUROCRYPT
2018
CRYPTO
Secure multiparty computation (MPC) on incomplete communication networks has been studied within two primary models: (1) Where a partial network is fixed a priori, and thus corruptions can occur dependent on its structure, and (2) Where edges in the communication graph are determined dynamically as part of the protocol. Whereas a rich literature has succeeded in mapping out the feasibility and limitations of graph structures supporting secure computation in the fixed-graph model (including strong classical lower bounds), these bounds do not apply in the latter dynamic-graph setting, which has recently seen exciting new results, but remains relatively unexplored.In this work, we initiate a similar foundational study of MPC within the dynamic-graph model. As a first step, we investigate the property of graph expansion. All existing protocols (implicitly or explicitly) yield communication graphs which are expanders, but it is not clear whether this is inherent. Our results consist of two types:Upper bounds: We demonstrate secure protocols whose induced communication graphs are not expanders, within a wide range of settings (computational, information theoretic, with low locality, and adaptive security), each assuming some form of input-independent setup.Lower bounds: In the setting without setup and adaptive corruptions, we demonstrate that for certain functionalities, no protocol can maintain a non-expanding communication graph against all adversarial strategies. Our lower bound relies only on protocol correctness (not privacy), and requires a surprisingly delicate argument.
2016
TCC
2013
CRYPTO

Eurocrypt 2022
Eurocrypt 2020
TCC 2019
TCC 2018