IACR News
Here you can see all recent updates to the IACR webpage. These updates are also available:
16 June 2022
Jeju, Korea, 22 August - 24 August 2022
Submission deadline: 18 July 2022
Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P), Benguerir. Morroco
Located at the heart of the future Green City of Benguerir, Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P), a higher education institution with an international standard, is established to serve Morocco and the African continent. Its vision is honed around research and innovation at the service of education and development. This unique nascent university, with its state-of-the-art campus and infrastructure, has woven a sound academic and research network, and its recruitment process is seeking high quality academics and professionals in order to boost its quality-oriented research environment in the metropolitan area of Marrakech.
The School of Computer and Communication Sciences at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P), Benguerir, Morocco is currently looking for motivated and talented Postdoctoral researchers in the area of Pos-Quantum Cryptography. The successful candidates will primarily be working on the following topics (but not limited to):
- Quantum primitives such as PKE, KEM, KEX, and Digital Signatures
- Post quantum Zero Knowledge Proofs
- Design and implementation of hybrid solutions
- Attack on existing proposals
The ideal candidates should have a PhD degree in cryptography (or related field) from a leading university, and a proven record of publications in top cryptography/security/TCS venues.
We offer competitive salary (the net salary per month is 2000 USD), a budget for conference travel and research visit, and membership in a young and vibrant team with several international contacts (for more see: https://www.um6p.ma/en).
Submit your application via email including
- full CV,
- sample publications,
- a detailed research proposal,
- and 2-3 reference letters sent directly by the referees.
Applications will be considered until the position is filled.
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Assoc. Prof. Mustapha Hedabou (mustapha.hedabou@um6p.ma) https://career2.successfactors.eu/sfcareer/jobreqcareer?jobId=1339&company=ump
Hebrew University, Israel
Closing date for applications:
Contact: crypto@cs.huji.ac.il
Monash University
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Jiangshan Yu
More information: https://www.jiangshanyu.com/doc/postdoc.html
Tampere University
At NISEC (https://research.tuni.fi/nisec/) we are looking for several Doctoral Researchers in the field of applied cryptography, hardware security, provable security and privacy.
The selected candidates will primarily be working on the following topics (but not limited to):
- Differential Privacy;
- Functional Encryption;
- Privacy-Preserving Analytics;
- Privacy-Preserving Machine Learning;
- Efficient operations on encrypted data;
- Processing of encrypted data in outsourced and untrusted environments;
- Side Channel Analysis (SCA);
- Machine Learning based SCA;
- Embedded systems security (e.g. ARM and RISC-V based SoCs); TEE security and development (e.g. TrustZone, Trusted Applications, etc.).
Application deadline: 1 August 2022.
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Antonis Michalas (antonios.michalas AT tuni.fi) and Alejandro Cabrera Aldaya alejandro.cabreraaldaya AT tuni.fi
More information: https://bit.ly/3MAe26J
Tampere University
At NISEC (https://research.tuni.fi/nisec/) we are looking for several PostDoctoral Researchers in the field of applied cryptography, provable security and privacy.
The selected candidates will primarily be working on the following topics (but not limited to):
- Differential Privacy;
- Functional Encryption;
- Privacy-Preserving Analytics;
- Privacy-Preserving Machine Learning;
- Efficient operations on encrypted data;
- Processing of encrypted data in outsourced and untrusted environments.
Application deadline: 1 August 2022.
Closing date for applications:
Contact:
Antonis Michalas (https://www.amichalas.com)
More information: https://bit.ly/3NDPHhN
Morgan Thomas
Nicolas Alhaddad, Sourav Das, Sisi Duan, Ling Ren, Mayank Varia, Zhuolun Xiang, Haibin Zhang
Nicolas Alhaddad, Sourav Das, Sisi Duan, Ling Ren, Mayank Varia, Zhuolun Xiang, Haibin Zhang
Yadi Zhong, Ujjwal Guin
Jelle Don, Serge Fehr, Yu-Hsuan Huang
In the second part of the paper, we use our compiler to show the security of the very efficient hash-based split-key PRF proposed by Giacon, Heuer and Poettering (PKC 2018), in the quantum random-oracle model. Using a split-key PRF as the key-derivation function gives rise to a secure KEM combiner. Thus, our result shows that the hash-based construction of Giacon et al. can be safely used in the context of quantum attacks, for instance to combine a well-established but only classically-secure KEM with a candidate KEM that is believed to be quantum-secure.
Our security proof for the split-key PRF crucially relies on our adaptive-to-static compiler, but we expect our compiler to be useful beyond this particular application. Indeed, we discuss a couple of other, known results from the literature that would have profitted from our compiler, in that these works had to go though serious complications in oder to deal with adaptivity.
Zhi Qiu, Kang Yang, Yu Yu, Lijing Zhou
Khin Mi Mi Aung, Enhui Lim, Jun Jie Sim, Benjamin Hong Meng Tan, Huaxiong Wang, Sze Ling Yeo
In this work, we describe a method to encode more data on top of SIMD, \emph{Field Instruction Multiple Data}, applying reverse multiplication friendly embedding~(RMFE) to FHE. With RMFE, length-\(k\) \(\mathbb{F}_{t}\) vectors can be encoded into \(\mathbb{F}_{t^d}\) and multiplied once. The results have to be recoded~(decoded and then re-encoded) before further multiplications can be done. We introduce an FHE-specific technique to additionally evaluate arbitrary linear transformations on encoded vectors for free during the FHE recode operation. On top of that, we present two optimizations to unlock high degree extension fields with small \(t\) for homomorphic computation: \(r\)-fold RMFE, which allows products of up to \(2^r\) encoded vectors before recoding, and a three-stage recode process for RMFEs obtained by composing two smaller RMFEs. Experiments were performed to evaluate the effectiveness of FIMD from various RMFEs compared to standard SIMD operations. Overall, we found that FIMD generally had \(>2\times\) better (amortized) multiplication times compared to FHE for the same amount of data, while using almost \(k/2 \times\) fewer ciphertexts required.
Michel Abdalla, Thorsten Eisenhofer, Eike Kiltz, Sabrina Kunzweiler, Doreen Riepel
Azebaze Guimagang Laurian, Fouotsa Emmanuel, El Mrabet Nadia, Pecha Njiahouo Aminatou
Rupeng Yang, Zuoxia Yu, Man Ho Au, Willy Susilo
In this work, we solve the open problem via constructing public-key watermarkable PRFs with different trade-offs from various assumptions, ranging from standard lattice assumptions to the existence of indistinguishability obfuscation. To achieve the results, we first construct watermarking schemes in a weaker model, where the extraction algorithm is provided with a “hint” about the watermarked PRF key. Then we upgrade the constructions to standard watermarking schemes using a robust unobfuscatable PRF. We also provide the first construction of robust unobfuscatable PRF in this work, which is of independent interest.
Allen Kim, Xiao Liang, Omkant Pandey
We present a new approach for constructing efficient non-malleable zero-knowledge for all languages in NP, based on a new primitive called instance-based non-malleable commitment (IB-NMC). We show how to construct practical IB-NMC by leveraging the fact that simulators of sub-linear zero-knowledge protocols can be much faster than the honest prover algorithm. With an efficient implementation of IB-NMC, our approach yields the first general-purpose non-malleable zero-knowledge protocol that achieves practical efficiency in the plain model.
All of our protocols can be instantiated from symmetric primitives such as block-ciphers and hash functions, have reasonable efficiency in practice, and are general-purpose. Our techniques also yield the first efficient non-malleable commitment scheme without public-key assumptions.
Cody Freitag, Ilan Komargodski
In this work, we study the complexity of statistically-sound interactive proofs for the repeated squaring relation. Technically, we consider interactive proofs where the prover sends at most $k \ge 0$ elements per round and the verifier performs generic group operations over the group $\mathbb{Z}_N^\star$. As our main contribution, we show that for any one-round proof with a randomized verifier (i.e., an MA proof) the verifier either runs in parallel time $\Omega(T/(k+1))$ with high probability, or is able to factor $N$ given the proof provided by the prover. This shows that either the prover essentially sends $p,q$ such that $N = p\cdot q$ (which is infeasible or undesirable in most applications), or a variant of Pietrzak's proof of repeated squaring (ITCS 2019) has optimal verifier complexity $O(T/(k+1))$. In particular, it is impossible to obtain a statistically-sound one-round proof of repeated squaring with efficiency on par with the computationally-sound protocol of Wesolowski (EUROCRYPT 2019), with a generic group verifier. We further extend our one-round lower bound to a natural class of recursive (multi-round) interactive proofs for repeated squaring.