IACR News
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27 March 2024
Zhe CEN, Xiutao FENG, Zhangyi WANG, Yamin ZHU, Chunping CAO
Xavier Bonnetain, Rachelle Heim Boissier, Gaëtan Leurent, André Schrottenloher
26 March 2024
Zvika Brakerski, Nir Magrafta
Our analysis shows that an even simpler construction: applying a random (binary) phase followed by a random computational-basis permutation, would suffice, assuming that the input is orthogonal and flat (that is, has high min-entropy when measured in the computational basis).
Using quantum-secure one-way functions (which imply quantum-secure pseudorandom functions and permutations), we obtain an efficient cryptographic instantiation of the above.
Dario Catalano, Emanuele Giunta, Francesco Migliaro
In this work we make progress on the study of this primitive in three main directions. First, we show that two general and well established encryption paradigms, namely hybrid encryption and the IBE-to-CCA transform, admit very simple and natural anamorphic extensions. Next, we show that anamorphism, far from being a phenomenon isolated to "basic" encryption schemes, extends also to homomorphic encryption. We show that some existing homomorphic schemes, (and most notably the fully homomorphic one by Gentry, Sahai and Waters) can be made anamorphic, while retaining their homomorphic properties both with respect to the regular and the covert message.
Finally we refine the notion of anamorphic encryption by envisioning the possibility of splitting the anamorphic key into an encryption component (that only allows to encrypt covert messages) and a decryption component. This makes possible for a receiver to set up several, independent, covert channels associated with a single covert key.
Florette Martinez
In 2011 Simon Knellwolf et Willi Meier found a way to go around this hard problem and exhibited a weakness of this generator. In addition to be able to distinguish the outputs from the uniform distribution, they designed an algorithm that retrieves a large portion of the secret. We present here an alternate version of the attack, with similar costs, that works on the same range of parameters but retrieves a larger portion of the secret.
Harishma Boyapally, Durba Chatterjee, Kuheli Pratihar, Sayandeep Saha, Debdeep Mukhopadhyay, Shivam Bhasin
Orhun Kara
Ben Fisch, Arthur Lazzaretti, Zeyu Liu, Charalampos Papamanthou
All known constructions of single server client-preprocessing PIR rely on one of the following two paradigms: (1) a linear-bandwidth offline phase where the client downloads the whole database from the server, or (2) a sublinear-bandwidth offline phase where however the server has to compute a large-depth ($O_\lambda (N)$) circuit under FHE in order to execute the preprocessing phase.
In this paper, we construct a single server client-preprocessing PIR scheme which achieves both sublinear offline bandwidth (the client does not have to download the whole database offline) and a low-depth (i.e. $O_\lambda(1)$), highly parallelizable preprocessing circuit. We estimate that on a single thread, our scheme's preprocessing time should be more than 350x times faster than in prior single server client-preprocessing PIR constructions. Moreover, with parallelization, the latency reduction would be even more drastic. In addition, this construction also allows for updates in $O_\lambda (1)$ time, something not achieved before in this model.
Røros, Noorwegen, 12 May - 15 May 2025
Submission deadline: 16 October 2024
Notification: 5 February 2025
Madrid, Spain, 4 May - 8 May 2025
Shonan, Japan, 30 July - 2 August 2024
NXP Semiconductors Gratkorn/Austria, Hamburg/Germany, Eindhoven/Netherlands & Toulouse/France
Become part of a highly talented and dynamic international development team that develops state-of-the art secure cryptographic libraries which are protected against physical and logical attacks, which have applications across all different NXP domains and business lines (payment, identification, mobile, IoT, Automotive, Edge Processing, etc.).
When you join NXP you have the opportunity to broaden your technical knowledge in all of these areas.
Responsibilities
- You will develop crypto algorithms (incl. Post Quantum Crypto) based on specifications, being involved from the coding/programming, test, code review, release stages.
- You will align with our innovation team, architectural team, hardware teams and support teams to develop the algorithms which contribute to a complete security subsystem in all of NXP's business lines.
Your Profile
- Bachelor + 3-5 years of relevant experience Or You are a graduate with a Master or PhD Degree in Computer Science, Electronics Engineering, Mathematics, Information Technology, Cryptography
- You have a passion for technology, you bring ideas to the table and you are proud of your results.
We offer
- We offer you the opportunity to learn and build on your technical knowledge and experience in some of the following areas: algorithm development including post quantum cryptography (DES, AES, RSA, ECC, SHA and many more)
- embedded software development in C and Assembly
- work with ARM Cortex M and RISC V platforms
- Work on hardware and software countermeasures against side channel (SCA) and fault attacks, (FA).
Ready to create a smarter world? Join the future of Innovation. Join NXP. Apply online!
https://nxp.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/fr-FR/careers/job/Gratkorn/Embedded-Crypto-Software-Developer--m-f-d-_R-10052127
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Veronika von Hepperger (veronika.vonhepperger@nxp.com)
More information: https://nxp.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/fr-FR/careers/job/Gratkorn/Embedded-Crypto-Software-Developer--m-f-d-_R-10052127
Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology
Closing date for applications:
Contact: SCHWARTZ Cathy
More information: https://bit.ly/3xa6NAy
RWTH Aachen, Department of Computer Science, Germany
At the Chair of Quantum Information Systems at RWTH Aachen, Germany, we have several phd and postdoc positions available in the area of quantum formal verification, quantum programs, quantum crypto, connected to the ERC project "Certified Quantum Security".
Supervisor would be Dominique Unruh.
In particular, there are the following topics, but we accept phd and postdoc applications for other topics if they fit into the general direction of our group.
- PhD position “Verification of Quantum Key Distribution”
- PhD position “Functional quantum programs in F*”
- PhD position “Certified quantum compilation”
All positions are fully funded (German salary class TV-L E13).
Application deadline is April 15, 2024. See the webpage for application instructions.
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Dominique Unruh, email: job.igxkb0@rwth.unruh.de
More information: https://qis.rwth-aachen.de/positions/
23 March 2024
University of Edinburgh and ZK Lab
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Markulf Kohlweiss (markulf.kohlweiss@ed.ac.uk), Jan Bobolz (jan.bobolz@ed.ac.uk)
More information: https://zk-lab.org
Tallinn University of Technology
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Levent Aksoy (levent.aksoy@taltech.ee)
More information: https://candidate.recrur.com/public/jobad/en/b98a4a29-7
PQShield Ltd, Research and Development
What you’ll be doing:
The primary responsibility of this position will be to advance the state of post-quantum secure messaging such as Signal and Message Layer Security (MLS). While the main focus is to conduct groundbreaking research, we encourage and support translating academic research into tangible contributions, such as proposals to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for standardisation.
Qualifications: While you will mostly collaborate with a group, it is preferred that you have some of the following backgrounds to ensure a smooth start into the project:
In addition to cryptographic expertise, we seek candidates with:
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Please apply to the job through the PQShield's Careers page or through the link below:
PQShield Career page: https://pqshield.com/careers/apply/?gh_jid=4309579101
More information: https://pqshield.com/careers/apply/?gh_jid=4309579101
FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany
Necessary qualifications: Applicants should have an excellent academic record and hold an MSc or an equivalent university degree in computer science or related disciplines, and have the goal to finish a PhD degree within three years.
Supplementary description: The positions will commence on October 1, 2024. FAU aims to increase the number of women in scientific positions. Female candidates are therefore particularly encouraged to apply. In case of equal qualifications, candidates with disabilities will take precedence. Please submit your complete application documents by April 10, 2024 to cybercrime-applications@fau.de. Please mention in your application at least one research area from the above list which you are specifically interested in. Interviews will commence between 13. and 17.05.2024 in Erlangen.
Founded in 1743 and situated at the heart of the Nuremberg Metropolitan Region, FAU is a strong research university with an international perspective and one of the largest universities in Germany. FAUs outstanding research and teaching is reflected in top positions in both national and international rankings, as well as the high amount of DFG funding which its researchers are able to secure.
Closing date for applications:
Contact: Paul Rösler (paul.roesler@fau.de)
22 March 2024
Charlotte Hoffmann, Krzysztof Pietrzak
A recent application of VDFs by Arun, Bonneau and Clark (Asiacrypt'22) are short-lived proofs and signatures, which are proofs and signatures which are only sound for some time $t$, but after that can be forged by anyone. For this they rely on "watermarkable VDFs", where the proof embeds a prover chosen watermark. To achieve stronger notions of proofs/signatures with reusable forgeability, they rely on "zero-knowledge VDFs", where instead of the output $y$, one just proves knowledge of this output. The existing proposals for watermarkable and zero-knowledge VDFs all build on Wesolowski's PoE, for the watermarkable VDFs there's currently no security proof.
In this work we give the first constructions that transform any PoEs in hidden order groups into watermarkable VDFs and into zkVDFs, solving an open question by Arun et al.. Unlike our watermarkable VDF, the zkVDF (required for reusable forgeability) is not very practical as the number of group elements in the proof is a security parameter. To address this, we introduce the notion of zero-knowledge proofs of sequential work (zkPoSW), a notion that relaxes zkVDFs by not requiring that the output is unique. We show that zkPoSW are sufficient to construct proofs or signatures with reusable forgeability, and construct efficient zkPoSW from any PoE, ultimately achieving short lived proofs and signatures that improve upon Arun et al's construction in several dimensions (faster forging times, weaker assumptions).
A key idea underlying our constructions is to not directly construct a (watermarked or zk) proof for $y=x^{2^T}$, but instead give a (watermarked or zk) proof for the more basic statement that $x',y'$ satisfy $x'=x^r,y'=y^r$ for some $r$, together with a normal PoE for $y'=(x')^{2^T}$.