International Association
for Cryptologic Research

IDEAS NCBR Sp. z o.o. is a scientific and research centre operating in the field of artificial intelligence and digital economy, whose mission is to support the development of these technologies in Poland by creating a platform connecting the academic and business environment. IDEAS NCBR Sp. z o.o. was founded by the National Centre for Research and Development (NCBR) and is a part of NCBR Group. Our goal is to build in Poland the largest, friendly to conduct innovative research platform, to educate a new generation of scientists focused on the practical application of the developed algorithms and their subsequent commercialization in the industry, finance, medicine and other branches of the economy. IDEAS NCBR is now seeking to appoint a Group Leader in Cybersecurity with Emphasis on Post-quantum Cryptography who will build and lead the most recognizable research group (circa 20 people) in this area. Candidates with Post-quantum Cryptography expertise are strongly encouraged to apply. Reporting to the President, the Group Leader will develop and lead an exciting programme of research and innovation projects aligned with the vision and mission of IDEAS NCBR. The Group Leader will also act as an ambassador for IDEAS NCBR, representing the centre nationally and internationally, forging links with universities and industry, and identifying relevant opportunities for commercialisation.

Closing date for applications:

Contact: Marta Krzyżycka

More information: https://ideas-ncbr.softgarden.io/job/34064687?l=pl

As the pioneer center in Asia focusing on the quantum transition, the Quantum-Safe Migration Center (QSMC) was initiated by Chelpis Quantum Tech in 2023. Through collaborations with Taiwan's academic institutions, industry professionals, and semiconductor manufacturers, we're committed to providing swift and efficient solutions for transitioning to the quantum era and minimizing the potential threats quantum computing may pose to information systems.
Chelpis Quantum Tech was established in 2017, drawing its team from the Fast Cryptography Laboratory at National Taiwan University. Our primary focus has been research and development of post-quantum cryptographic systems and the creation of related cryptographic applications.

QSMC is looking for an applied post-quantum cryptography researcher to join our research team in Taipei, Taiwan.
We currently have three research focus areas and candidates should be experienced in at least one:

• PQC Hardware
• Formally-verified PQC Software
• New PQC primitives (in particular, candidates of the recent NIST PQC digital signature competition)

Candidates should hold a PhD in cryptography or a closely related field and have a track record in applied post-quantum cryptography with publications at top cryptography or security conferences. Responsibilities:

• Work on research projects and publish at top-tier cryptography and security conferences
• Collaborate with researchers in Taiwan and internationally
• Present research on international workshops and conferences
• Contribute to standardization efforts such as NIST PQC
• Consult Chelpis' other teams in all aspects of post-quantum cryptography

If you are interested, please send your CV to Ming Chih (my.chih@chelpis.com) and Matthias Kannwischer (matthias@chelpis.com) to schedule an informal discussion.

Closing date for applications:

Contact:

• Ming Chih (my.chih@chelpis.com)
• Matthias Kannwischer (matthias@chelpis.com)

More information: https://www.qsmc.org/

Help bring research to life and drive your career forward with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC), Canada's largest research and technology organization. We are looking for a Research Officer to join our Cryptography and Quantum Computing team, and to support NRC’s Digital Technologies Research Centre (NRC-DT). The Research Officer would be someone who shares our core values of Integrity, Excellence, Respect and Creativity. Our Cryptography and Quantum Computing team conducts research on quantum/post-quantum cryptography, privacy-preserving computing, and quantum computing. Some of our current projects are on quantum-secure V2V communication, obfuscated (quantum) computing, biometric authentication, privacy preserving record linkage, and secure machine learning. We are looking for an enthusiastic applied cryptographer who can work closely with our cryptographic researchers on the design and implementation of cryptographic algorithms and protocols. The primary responsibility of the researcher in this position is to support the goals of NRC and the activities of the Digital Technologies Research Centre in conducting research of international calibre in cryptography, machine learning, and other related topics. The researcher will work in a team environment with other researchers and technical experts in world-class facilities. The researcher will be called on to participate in international evaluations or demonstrations of the team’s applied technologies. About the Digital Technologies Research Centre We make digital technologies smarter and more intuitive for Canadians and Canadian businesses by exploring uses of data and information in innovative and meaningful ways to solve real problems. Our focus is advanced analytics, computer vision, natural language processing and artificial intelligence technologies. Education PhD in computer science, mathematics, engineering, with a specialization in cryptography, security, or privacy is required for this position.

Closing date for applications:

Contact: https://recruitment-recrutement.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/job/Various-Locations-Applied-Cryptography-Research-Officer-ON/572782617/

More information: https://recruitment-recrutement.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/job/Various-Locations-Applied-Cryptography-Research-Officer-ON/572782617/

The recent technological advances in Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) rise the questions of robust implementations of new asymmetric cryptographic primitives in today’s technology. This is the case for the lattice-based CRYSTALS-Kyber algorithm which has been selected as the first NIST standard for Public Key Encryption (PKE) and Key Encapsulation Mechanisms (KEM). We have notably to make sure the Kyber implementation is resilient against physical attacks like Side-Channel Analysis (SCA) and Fault Injection Attacks (FIA). To reach this goal, we propose to use the masking countermeasure, more precisely the generic Direct Sum Masking method (DSM). By taking inspiration of a previous paper on AES, we extend the method to finite fields of characteristic prime other than 2 and even-length codes. In particular, we investigated its application to Keccak, which is the hash-based function used in Kyber. We also provided the first masked implementation of Kyber providing both SCA and FIA resilience while not requiring any conversion between different masking methods.

Keller and Sun (ICML'22) have found a gap in the accuracy between floating-point deep learning in cleartext and secure quantized deep learning using multi-party computation. We have discovered that this gap is caused by a bug in the implementation of max-pooling. In this note, we present updated figures to support this conclusion. We also add figures for another network on CIFAR-10.

Contact discovery is a crucial component of social applications, facilitating interactions between registered contacts. This work introduces Arke, a novel approach to contact discovery that addresses the limitations of existing solutions in terms of privacy, scalability, and reliance on trusted third parties. Arke ensures the unlinkability of user interactions, mitigates enumeration attacks, and operates without single points of failure or trust. Notably, Arke is the first contact discovery system whose performance is independent of the total number of users and the first that can operate in a Byzantine setting. It achieves its privacy goals through an unlinkable handshake mechanism built on top of an identity-based non-interactive key exchange. By leveraging a custom distributed architecture, Arke forgoes the expense of consensus to achieve scalability while maintaining consistency in a Byzantine fault tolerant environment. Performance evaluations demonstrate that Arke can support enough throughput to operate at a planetary scale while maintaining sub-second latencies in a large geo-distributed setting.

Succinct Non-interactive Arguments of Knowledge (SNARKs) allow an untrusted prover to establish that it correctly ran some "witness-checking procedure" on a witness. A zkVM (short for zero-knowledge Virtual Machine) is a SNARK that allows the witness-checking procedure to be specified as a computer program written in the assembly language of a specific instruction set architecture (ISA).

A $\textit{front-end}$ converts computer programs into a lower-level representation such as an arithmetic circuit or generalization thereof. A SNARK for circuit-satisfiability can then be applied to the resulting circuit.

We describe a new front-end technique called Jolt that applies to a variety of ISAs. Jolt arguably realizes a vision called the $\textit{lookup singularity}$, which seeks to produce circuits that only perform lookups into pre-determined lookup tables. The circuits output by Jolt primarily perform lookups into a gigantic lookup table, of size more than $2^{128}$, that depends only on the ISA. The validity of the lookups are proved via a new $\textit{lookup argument}$ called Lasso described in a companion work (Setty, Thaler, and Wahby, e-print 2023). Although size-$2^{128}$ tables are vastly too large to materialize in full, the tables arising in Jolt are structured, avoiding costs that grow linearly with the table size.

We describe performance and auditability benefits of Jolt compared to prior zkVMs, focusing on the popular RISC-V ISA as a concrete example. The dominant cost for the Jolt prover applied to this ISA (on $64$-bit data types) is cryptographically committing to about six $256$-bit field elements per step of the RISC-V CPU. This compares favorably to prior zkVM provers, even those focused on far simpler VMs.

This paper introduces Lasso, a new family of lookup arguments, which allow an untrusted prover to commit to a vector $a \in \mathbb{F}^m$ and prove that all entries of a reside in some predetermined table $t \in \mathbb{F}^n$. Lasso’s performance characteristics unlock the so-called "lookup singularity". Lasso works with any multilinear polynomial commitment scheme, and provides the following efficiency properties.

For $m$ lookups into a table of size $n$, Lasso’s prover commits to just $m + n$ field elements. Moreover, the committed field elements are small, meaning that, no matter how big the field $\mathbb{F}$ is, they are all in the set $\{0, . . . , m\}$. When using a multiexponentiation-based commitment scheme, this results in the prover’s costs dominated by only $O(m + n)$ group operations (e.g., elliptic curve point additions), plus the cost to prove an evaluation of a multilinear polynomial whose evaluations over the Boolean hypercube are the table entries. This represents a significant improvement in prover costs over prior lookup arguments (e.g., plookup, Halo2’s lookups, lookup arguments based on logarithmic derivatives).

Unlike all prior lookup arguments, if the table $t$ is structured (in a precise sense that we define), then no party needs to commit to $t$, enabling the use of much larger tables than prior works (e.g., of size $2^{128}$ or larger). Moreover, Lasso’s prover only "pays" in runtime for table entries that are accessed by the lookup operations. This applies to tables commonly used to implement range checks, bitwise operations, big-number arithmetic, and even transitions of a full-fledged CPU such as RISC-V. Specifically, for any integer parameter $c > 1$, Lasso’s prover’s dominant cost is committing to $3 \cdot c \cdot m + c \cdot n^{1/c}$ field elements. Furthermore, all these field elements are “small”, meaning they are in the set $\{0, . . . , \max{(m, n^{1/c}, q)} − 1\}$, where $q$ is the maximum value in $a$.

Lasso’s starting point is Spark, a time-optimal polynomial commitment scheme for sparse polynomials in Spartan (CRYPTO 2020). We first provide a stronger security analysis for Spark. Spartan’s security analysis assumed that certain metadata associated with a sparse polynomial is committed by an honest party (this is acceptable for its purpose in Spartan, but not for Lasso). We prove that Spark remains secure even when that metadata is committed by a malicious party. This provides the first "standard" commitment scheme for sparse multilinear polynomials with optimal prover costs. We then generalize Spark to directly support a lookup argument for both structured and unstructured tables, with the efficiency characteristics noted above.

Password-based authentication is an extensively used method to authenticate users. It uses cryptography to communicate the authentication process. On the contrary, the physically unclonable function (PUF)-based authentication mechanism is also gaining popularity rapidly due to its usability in IoT devices. It is a lightweight authentication mechanism that does not use cryptography protocol. PUF-based authentication mechanisms cannot authenticate users. To overcome the drawback of PUF, we introduce a software-defined unclonable function (SUF, for short). Contrary to the PUF, the SUF is used to authenticate users, not devices. We use SUF to implement a lightweight password-based authentication mechanism termed Authentica. Authentica bridges the gap between the password-based and the PUF-based authentication mechanism. Authentica does not use cryptography for authentication. However, we establish challenge-response using cryptography during the registration phase, which is a one-time cost. Authentica addresses a) impersonation attacks, b) collision attacks, c) dictionary and rainbow table attacks, d) replay attacks, e) DDoS attacks, f) the domino effect issues, and g) the challenge-response database leakage issues.

Common verification steps in cryptographic protocols, such as signature or message authentication code checks or the validation of elliptic curve points, are crucial for the overall security of the protocol. Yet implementation errors omitting these steps easily remain unnoticed, as often the protocol will function perfectly anyways. One of the most prominent examples is Apple's goto fail bug where the erroneous certificate verification skipped over several of the required steps, marking invalid certificates as correctly verified. This vulnerability went undetected for at least 17 months.

We propose here a mechanism which supports the detection of such errors on a cryptographic level. Instead of merely returning the binary acceptance decision, we let the verification return more fine-grained information in form of what we call a confirmation code. The reader may think of the confirmation code as disposable information produced as part of the relevant verification steps. In case of an implementation error like the goto fail bug, the confirmation code would then miss essential elements.

The question arises now how to verify the confirmation code itself. We show how to use confirmation codes to tie security to basic functionality at the overall protocol level, making erroneous implementations be detected through the protocol not functioning properly. More concretely, we discuss the usage of confirmation codes in secure connections, established via a key exchange protocol and secured through the derived keys. If some verification steps in a key exchange protocol execution are faulty, then so will be the confirmation codes, and because we can let the confirmation codes enter key derivation, the connection of the two parties will eventually fail. In consequence, an implementation error like goto fail would now be detectable through a simple connection test.

This paper presents a provably secure, higher-order, and leakage-resilient (LR) rekeying scheme named LR Rekeying with Random oracle Repetition (LR4), along with a quantitative security evaluation methodology. Many existing LR cryptographies are based on a concept of leveled implementation, which still essentially require a leak-free sanctuary (i.e., differential power analysis (DPA)-resistant component(s)) for some parts. In addition, although several LR pseudorandom functions (PRFs) based on only bounded DPA-resistant components have been developed, their validity and effectiveness for rekeying usage still need to be determined. In contrast, LR4 is formally proven under a leakage model that captures the practical goal of side-channel attack (SCA) protection (e.g., masking with a practical order) and assumes no unbounded DPA-resistant sanctuary. This proof suggests that LR4 resists exponential invocations (up to the birthday bound of key size) without using any unbounded leak-free component, which is the first of its kind. Moreover, we present a quantitative SCA success rate evaluation methodology for LR4 that combines the bounded leakage models for LR cryptography and a state-of-the-art information-theoretical SCA evaluation method. We validate its soundness and effectiveness as a DPA countermeasure through a numerical evaluation; that is, the number of secure calls of a symmetric primitive increases exponentially by increasing a security parameter under practical conditions.

In this paper, we present a new distinguisher for the Tweak-aNd-Tweak (TNT) tweakable block cipher with $O(2^{n/2})$ complexity. The distinguisher is an adaptive chosen ciphertext distinguisher, unlike previous attacks that are only non-adaptive chosen plaintext attacks. However, the attack contradicts the security claims made by the designers. Given TNT can be seen as the three-round CLRW1 tweakable block cipher, our attack matches its more conservative bound. We provide the distinguisher description, a probabilistic analysis of its behaviour, experimental verification and an analysis of why the proof fails to capture the security of TNT. In summary, the distinguisher is based on collision counting and exploits non-uniformity in the statistical behaviour of random permutations. It reduces the goal of finding the collision to solving a difference equation defined over a random permutation. Due to this relation, the number of collisions observed by the distinguisher is twice as expected from an ideal tweakable block cipher.

Classic BFT consensus protocols guarantee safety and liveness for all clients if fewer than one-third of replicas are faulty. However, in applications such as high-value payments, some clients may want to prioritize safety over liveness. Flexible consensus allows each client to opt for a higher safety resilience, albeit at the expense of reduced liveness resilience. We present the first construction that allows optimal safety--liveness tradeoff for every client simultaneously. This construction is modular and is realized as an add-on applied on top of an existing consensus protocol. The add-on consists of an additional round of voting and permanent locking done by the replicas, to sidestep a sub-optimal quorum-intersection-based constraint present in previous solutions. We adapt our construction to the existing Ethereum protocol to derive optimal flexible confirmation rules that clients can adopt unilaterally without requiring system-wide changes. This is possible because existing Ethereum protocol features can double as the extra voting and locking. We demonstrate an implementation using Ethereum's consensus API.

Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is a new paradigm in the creation, distribution, and utilization of financial services via the integration of blockchain technology. Our research conducts a comprehensive introduction and meticulous classification of various DeFi applications. Beyond that, we thoroughly analyze these risks from both technical and economic perspectives, spanning multiple layers. Lastly, we point out research directions in DeFi, encompassing areas of technological advancements, innovative economics, and privacy optimization.

Linear codes play a crucial role in various fields of engineering and mathematics, including data storage, communication, cryptography, and combinatorics. Minimal linear codes, a subset of linear codes, are particularly essential for designing effective secret sharing schemes. In this paper, we introduce several classes of minimal binary linear codes by carefully selecting appropriate Boolean functions. These functions belong to a renowned class of Boolean functions, the general Maiorana-McFarland class. We employ a method first proposed by Ding et al. [7] to construct minimal codes violating the Ashikhmin-Barg bound (wide minimal codes) by using Krawtchouk polynomials. The lengths, dimensions, and weight distributions of the obtained codes are determined using the Walsh spectrum distribution of the chosen Boolean functions. Our findings demonstrate that a vast majority of the newly constructed codes are wide minimal codes. Furthermore, our proposed codes exhibit a significantly larger minimum distance, in some cases, compared to some existing similar constructions. Finally, we address this method, based on Krawtchouk polynomials, more generally, and highlight certain generic properties related to it. This study provides insights into the scope of this method.

A mutator set is a cryptographic data structure for authenticating operations on a changing set of data elements called items. Informally:

- There is a short commitment to the set. - There are succinct membership proofs for elements of the set. - It is possible to update the commitment as well as the membership proofs with minimal effort as new items are added to the set or as existing items are removed from it. - Items cannot be removed before they were added. - It is difficult to link an item's addition to the set to its removal from the set, except when using information available only to the party that generated it.

This paper formally defines the notion, motivates its existence with an application to scalable privacy in the context of cryptocurrencies, and proposes an instantiation inspired by Merkle mountain ranges and Bloom filters.

Decentralized Finance (DeFi), a blockchain-based financial ecosystem, suffers from smart contract vulnerabilities that led to a loss exceeding 3.24 billion USD by April 2022. To address this, blockchain firms audit DeFi applications, a process known as DeFi auditing. Our research aims to comprehend the mechanism and efficacy of DeFi auditing. We discovered its ability to detect vulnerabilities in smart contract logic and interactivity with other DeFi entities, but also noted its limitations in communication, transparency, remedial action implementation, and in preventing certain DeFi attacks. Moreover, our interview study delved into user perceptions of DeFi auditing, unmasking gaps in awareness, usage, and trust, and offering insights to address these issues.

Threshold signatures are digital signatures that support the multi-party signature generation such that a number of parties initially share a signing key and more than a threshold number of parties gather to generate a signature. In this paper, we propose a non-interactive decentralized threshold signature (NIDTS) scheme that supports the non-interactive and transparent key setup based on BLS signatures. Our NIDTS scheme has the following properties. 1) The key setup process is completely non-interactive and does not require message exchange between parties since the transfer of the register keys of parties is enough for a combiner to generate a compact verification key. 2) The register key of a party is compact since the size is independent of the number of group parties. 3) The signing process of parties is non-interactive. 4) The final threshold signature as well as partial signatures are succinct. We prove the security of our NIDTS scheme under computational assumptions in the random oracle model. Furthermore, we implement our NIDTS scheme in Rust and compare its performance with other scheme to show that the key setup of our scheme is more efficient. For example, in the unweighted setting of 1000 parties, the key setup process of the NIDTS scheme takes 164 seconds, which is 5.9 times faster than the key setup process of the multiverse threshold signature (MTS) scheme.

We analyze REDOG, a public-key encryption system submitted to the Korean competition on post-quantum cryptography. REDOG is based on rank-metric codes. We prove its incorrectness and attack its implementation providing an efficient message recovery attack. Furthermore, we show that the security of REDOG is much lower than claimed. We then proceed to mitigate these issues and provide two approaches to fix the decryption issue, one of which also leads to better security.

Fully secure multiparty computation (or guaranteed output delivery) among $n$ parties can be achieved with perfect security if the number of corruptions $t$ is less than $n/3$, or with statistical security with the help of a broadcast channel if $t
In this work we make progress in this direction by taking the second route above: we present a fully secure protocol for $t