International Association
for Cryptologic Research

We present a new generic transform that takes a multi-round interactive proof for the membership of a language L and outputs a non-interactive zero-knowledge proof (not of knowledge) in the common reference string model. Similar to the Fiat-Shamir transform, it requires a hash function H. However, in our transform the zero-knowledge property is in the standard model, and the adaptive soundness is in the non-programmable random oracle model (NPROM). Behind this new generic transform, we build a new generic OR-composition of two multi-round interactive proofs. Note that the two common techniques for building OR-proofs (parallel OR-proof and sequential OR-proof) cannot be naturally extended to the multi-round setting. We also give a proof of security for our OR-proof in the quantum oracle model (QROM), surprisingly the security loss in QROM is independent from the number of rounds.

We propose the first tight security proof for the ordinary two-message signed Diffie–Hellman key exchange protocol in the random oracle model. Our proof is based on the strong computational Diffie–Hellman assumption and the multiuser security of a digital signature scheme. With our security proof, the signed DH protocol can be deployed with optimal parameters, independent of the number of users or sessions, without the need to compensate any security loss. We abstract our approach with a new notion called verifiable key exchange. In contrast to a known tight three-message variant of the signed Diffie–Hellman protocol (Gjøsteen and Jager, in: Shacham, Boldyreva (eds) CRYPTO 2018, Part II. LNCS, Springer, Heidelberg, 2018), we do not require any modification to the original protocol, and our tightness result is proven in the “Single-Bit-Guess” model which we know can be tightly composed with symmetric cryptographic primitives to establish a secure channel. Finally, we extend our approach to the group setting and construct the first tightly secure group authenticated key exchange protocol.

Transferable e-cash is the most faithful digital analog of physical cash, as it allows users to transfer coins between them in isolation, that is, without interacting with a bank or a ``ledger''. Appropriate protection of user privacy and, at the same time, providing means to trace fraudulent behavior (double-spending of coins) have made instantiating the concept notoriously hard. Baldimtsi et al.\ (PKC'15) gave a first instantiation, but, as it relies on a powerful cryptographic primitive, the scheme is not practical. We also point out a flaw in their scheme. In this paper we revisit the model for transferable e-cash and propose simpler yet stronger security definitions. We then provide the first concrete construction, based on bilinear groups, give rigorous proofs that it satisfies our model, and analyze its efficiency in detail.

Lossy algebraic filters (LAFs) are function families where each function is parametrized by a tag, which determines if the function is injective or lossy. While initially introduced by Hofheinz (Eurocrypt 2013) as a technical tool to build encryption schemes with key-dependent message chosen-ciphertext (KDM-CCA) security, they also find applications in the design of robustly reusable fuzzy extractors. So far, the only known LAF family requires tags comprised of $$\varTheta (n^2)$$ group elements for functions with input space $$\mathbb {Z}_p^n$$, where p is the group order. In this paper, we describe a new LAF family where the tag size is only linear in n and prove it secure under simple assumptions in asymmetric bilinear groups. Our construction can be used as a drop-in replacement in all applications of the initial LAF system. In particular, it can shorten the ciphertexts of Hofheinz’s KDM-CCA-secure public-key encryption scheme by 19 group elements. It also allows substantial space improvements in a recent fuzzy extractor proposed by Wen and Liu (Asiacrypt 2018). As a second contribution, we show how to modify our scheme so as to prove it (almost) tightly secure, meaning that security reductions are not affected by a concrete security loss proportional to the number of adversarial queries.