International Association for Cryptologic Research

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Hide-and-Seek and the Non-Resignability of the BUFF Transform

Authors:
Jelle Don , Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica, the Netherlands
Serge Fehr , Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica, the Netherlands
Yu-Hsuan Huang , Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica, the Netherlands
Jyun-Jie Liao , Cornell University, USA
Patrick Struck , University of Konstanz, Germany
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Conference: TCC 2024
Abstract: The BUFF transform, due to Cremers et al. (S&P'21), is a generic transformation for digital signature scheme, with the purpose of obtaining additional security guarantees beyond unforgeability: exclusive ownership, message-bound signatures, and non-resignability. Non-resignability (which essentially challenges an adversary to re-sign an unknown message for which it only obtains the signature) turned out to be a delicate matter, as recently Don et al. (CRYPTO'24) showed that the initial definition is essentially unachieveable; in particular, it is not achieved by the BUFF transfom. This led to the introduction of new, weakened versions of non-resignability, which are (potentially) achievable. In particular, it was shown that a salted variant of the BUFF transform does achieves some weakened version of non-resignability. However, the salting requires additional randomness and leads to slightly larger signatures. Whether the original BUFF transform also achieves some meaningful notion of non-resignability remained a natural open question. In this work, we answer this question in the affirmative. We show that the BUFF transform satisfies the (almost) strongest notions of non-resignability one can hope for, facing the known impossibility results. Our results cover both the statistical and the computational case, and both the classical and the quantum setting. At the core of our analysis lies a new security game for random oracles that we call Hide-and-Seek. While seemingly innocent at first glance, it turns out to be surprisingly challenging to rigorously analyze.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{tcc-2024-34642,
  title={Hide-and-Seek and the Non-Resignability of the BUFF Transform},
  publisher={Springer-Verlag},
  author={Jelle Don and Serge Fehr and Yu-Hsuan Huang and Jyun-Jie Liao and Patrick Struck},
  year=2024
}