International Association
for Cryptologic Research

The extensive use of cloud storage has created an urgent need to search and share data. Public key authenticated encryption with keyword search (PAEKS) allows for the retrieval from encrypted data, while resisting the insider keyword guessing attacks (IKGAs). Most PAEKS schemes only work with single-receiver model, exhibiting very limited applicability. To address this concern, there have been researches on broadcast authenticated encryption with keyword search (BAEKS) to achieve multi-receiver ciphertext search. But to our best knowledge, existing BAEKS schemes are susceptible to quantum computing attacks. In this paper, we propose lattice-based BAEKS, the first post-quantum broadcast authenticated encryption with keyword search, providing robust quantum-safety in multi-receiver model. Specifically, we leverage several lattice sampling algorithms and rejection sampling technique to construct our BAEKS scheme. Furthermore, we incorporate minimal cover set technique and lattice basis extension algorithm to construct an enhanced version, namely FS-BAEKS. Moreover, we give a rigorous security analysis of our scheme. Ultimately, the best computational overhead of BAEKS and Test algorithms in our BAEKS scheme delivers up to approximately 12-x and 402-x faster over prior arts when the number of receivers is six, respectively, which is practical for cloud storage systems.

We introduce SQIsign2D-West, a variant of SQIsign using two-dimensional isogeny representations. SQIsignHD was the first variant of SQIsign to use higher dimensional isogeny representations. Its eight-dimensional variant is geared towards provable security but is deemed unpractical. Its four-dimensional variant is geared towards efficiency and has significantly faster signing times than SQIsign, but slower verification owing to the complexity of the four-dimensional representation. Its authors commented on the apparent difficulty of getting any improvement over SQIsign by using two-dimensional representations. In this work, we introduce new algorithmic tools that make two-dimensional representations a viable alternative. These lead to a signature scheme with sizes comparable to SQIsignHD, slightly slower signing than SQIsignHD but still much faster than SQIsign, and the fastest verification of any known variant of SQIsign. We achieve this without compromising on the security proof: the assumptions behind SQIsign2D-West are similar to those of the eight-dimensional variant of SQIsignHD. Additionally, like SQIsignHD, SQIsign2D-West favourably scales to high levels of security Concretely, for NIST level I we achieve signing times of 80 ms and verifying times of 4.5 ms, using optimised arithmetic based on intrinsics available to the Ice Lake architecture. For NIST level V, we achieve 470 ms for signing and 31 ms for verifying.

A zero-bit watermarked language model produces text that is indistinguishable from that of the underlying model, but which can be detected as machine-generated using a secret key. Unfortunately, merely detecting AI-generated spam, say, as watermarked may not prevent future abuses. If we could additionally trace the text to a spammer's API token or account, we could then cut off their access or pursue legal action.

We introduce multi-user watermarks, which allow tracing model-generated text to individual users or to groups of colluding users. We construct multi-user watermarking schemes from undetectable zero-bit watermarking schemes. Importantly, our schemes provide both zero-bit and multi-user assurances at the same time: detecting shorter snippets just as well as the original scheme, and tracing longer excerpts to individuals. Along the way, we give a generic construction of a watermarking scheme that embeds long messages into generated text.

Ours are the first black-box reductions between watermarking schemes for language models. A major challenge for black-box reductions is the lack of a unified abstraction for robustness — that marked text is detectable even after edits. Existing works give incomparable robustness guarantees, based on bespoke requirements on the language model's outputs and the users' edits. We introduce a new abstraction to overcome this challenge, called AEB-robustness. AEB-robustness provides that the watermark is detectable whenever the edited text "approximates enough blocks" of model-generated output. Specifying the robustness condition amounts to defining approximates, enough, and blocks. Using our new abstraction, we relate the robustness properties of our message-embedding and multi-user schemes to that of the underlying zero-bit scheme, in a black-box way. Whereas prior works only guarantee robustness for a single text generated in response to a single prompt, our schemes are robust against adaptive prompting, a stronger and more natural adversarial model.

Multivariate public key cryptography (MPKC) is one of the most promising alternatives to build quantum-resistant signature schemes, as evidenced in NIST's call for additional post-quantum signature schemes. The main assumption in MPKC is the hardness of the Multivariate Quadratic (MQ) problem, which seeks for a common root to a system of quadratic polynomials over a finite field. Although the Crossbred algorithm is among the most efficient algorithm to solve MQ over small fields, its complexity analysis stands on shaky ground. In particular, it is not clear for what parameters it works and under what assumptions. In this work, we provide a rigorous analysis of the Crossbred algorithm over any finite field. We provide a complete explanation of the series of admissible parameters proposed in previous literature and explicitly state the regularity assumptions required for its validity. Moreover, we show that the series does not tell the whole story, hence we propose an additional condition for Crossbred to work. Additionally, we define and characterize a notion of regularity for systems over a small field, which is one of the main building blocks in the series of admissible parameters.

In our highly digitalized world, an adversary is not constrained to purely digital attacks but can monitor or influence the physical execution environment of a target computing device. Such side-channel or fault-injection analysis poses a significant threat to otherwise secure cryptographic implementations. Hence, it is important to consider additional adversarial capabilities when analyzing the security of cryptographic implementations besides the default black-box model. For side-channel analysis, this is done by providing the adversary with knowledge of some internal values, while for fault-injection analysis the capabilities of the adversaries include manipulation of some internal values.

In this work, we extend probabilistic security models for physical attacks, by introducing a general random probing model and a general random fault model to capture arbitrary leakage and fault distributions, as well as the combination of these models. Our aim is to enable a more accurate modeling of low-level physical effects. We then analyze important properties, such as the impact of adversarial knowledge on faults and compositions, and provide tool-based formal verification methods that allow the security assessment of design components. These methods are introduced as extension of previous tools VERICA and IronMask which are implemented, evaluated and compared.

Asymmetric Password-Authenticated Key Exchange (aPAKE) protocols, particularly Strong aPAKE (saPAKE) have enjoyed significant attention, both from academia and industry, with the well-known OPAQUE protocol currently undergoing standardization. In (s)aPAKE, a client and a server collaboratively establish a high-entropy key, relying on a previously exchanged password for authentication. A main feature is its resilience against offline and precomputation (for saPAKE) attacks. OPAQUE, as well as most other aPAKE protocols, have been designed and analyzed in a single-user setting, i.e., modelling that only a single user interacts with the server. By the composition framework of UC, security for the actual multi-user setting is then conjectured. As any real-world (s)aPAKE instantiation will need to cater multiple users, this introduces a dangerous gap in which developers are tasked to extend the single-user protocol securely and in a UC-compliant manner. In this work, we extend the (s)aPAKE definition to directly model the multi-user setting, and explicitly capture the impact that a server compromise has across user accounts. We show that the currently standardized multi-user version of OPAQUE might not provide the expected security, as it is insecure against offline attacks as soon as the file for one user in the system is compromised. This is due to using shared state among different users, which violates the UC composition framework. However, we show that another change introduced in the standardization draft which also involves a shared state does not compromise security. When extending the aPAKE security in the multi-client setting, we notice that the widely used security definition captures significantly weaker security guarantees than what is offered by many protocols. Essentially, the aPAKE definition assumes that the server stores unsalted password-hashes, whereas several protocols explicitly use a salt to protect against precomputation attacks. We therefore propose a definitional framework that captures different salting approaches -- thus showing that the security gap between aPAKE and saPAKE can be smaller than expected.

In this paper, we present efficient protected software implementations of the authenticated cipher Ascon, the recently announced winner of the NIST standardization process for lightweight cryptography. Our implementations target theoretical and practical security against second-order power analysis attacks. First, we propose an efficient second-order extension of a previously presented first-order masking of the Keccak S-box that does not require online randomness. The extension itself is inspired by a previously presented second-order masking of an AND-XOR construction. We then discuss implementation tricks that further improve performance and reduce the chance of unintended combination of shares during the execution of masked software on microprocessors. This allows us to retain the theoretic protection orders of masking in practice with low performance overhead, which we also confirm via TVLA on ARM microprocessors. The formal correctness of our designs is additionally verified using Coco on the netlist of a RISC-V IBEX core. We benchmark our masked software designs on 32-bit ARM and RISC-V microprocessor platforms. On both platforms, we can perform Ascon-128 authenticated encryption with a throughput of about 300 or 550 cycles/byte when operating on 2 or 3 shares. When utilizing a leveled implementation technique, the throughput of our masked implementations generally increases to about 90 cycles/byte. We publish our masked software implementations together with a generic software framework for evaluating performance and side-channel resistance of various masked cryptographic implementations.

Creating an adversary resilient Learned Bloom filter with provable guarantees is an open problem. We define a strong adversarial model for the Learned Bloom Filter. We also construct two adversary resilient variants of the Learned Bloom Filter called the Uptown Bodega Filter and the Downtown Bodega Filter. Our adversarial model extends an existing adversarial model designed for the classical (i.e not ``learned'') Bloom Filter by Naor and Yogev and considers computationally bounded adversaries that run in probabilistic polynomial time (PPT). We show that if pseudo-random permutations exist, then a secure Learned Bloom Filter may be constructed with $\lambda$ extra bits of memory and at most one extra pseudo-random permutation in the critical path. We further show that, if pseudo-random permutations exist, then a high utility Learned Bloom Filter may be constructed with $2\lambda$ extra bits of memory and at most one extra pseudo-random permutation in the critical path. Finally, we construct a hybrid adversarial model for the case where a fraction of the workload is chosen by an adversary. We show realistic scenarios where using the Downtown Bodega Filter gives better performance guarantees compared to alternative approaches in this model.

In many real-world scenarios, there are cases where a client wishes to check if a data element they hold is included in a set segmented across a large number of data holders. To protect user privacy, the client’s query and the data holders’ sets should remain encrypted throughout the whole process. Prior work on Private Set Intersection (PSI), Multi-Party PSI (MPSI), Private Membership Test (PMT), and Oblivious RAM (ORAM) falls short in this scenario in many ways. They either require data holders to possess the sets in plain- text, incur prohibitively high latency for aggregating results from a large number of data holders, leak the information about the party holding the intersection element, or induce a high false positive. This paper introduces the primitive of a Private Segmented Mem- bership Test (PSMT). We give a basic construction of a protocol to solve PSMT using a threshold variant of approximate-arithmetic homomorphic encryption and show how to overcome existing challenges to construct a PSMT protocol without leaking information about the party holding the intersection element or false positives for a large number of data holders ensuring IND-CPA^? security. Our novel approach is superior to existing state-of-the-art approaches in scalability with regard to the number of supported data holders. This is enabled by a novel summation-based homo- morphic membership check rather than a product-based one, as well as various novel ideas addressing technical challenges. Our PSMT protocol supports many more parties (up to 4096 in experiments) compared to prior related work that supports only around 100 parties efficiently. Our experimental evaluation shows that our method’s aggregation of results from data holders can run in 92.5s for 1024 data holders and a set size of 2^25, and our method’s over- head increases very slowly with the increasing number of senders. We also compare our PSMT protocol to other state-of-the-art PSI and MPSI protocols and discuss our improvements in usability with a better privacy model and a larger number of parties

Embedded curves are elliptic curves defined over a prime field whose order (characteristic) is the prime subgroup order (the scalar field) of a pairing-friendly curve. Embedded curves have a large prime-order subgroup of cryptographic size but are not pairing-friendly themselves. Sanso and El Housni published families of embedded curves for BLS pairing-friendly curves. Their families are parameterized by polynomials, like families of pairing-friendly curves are. However their work did not found embedded families for KSS pairing-friendly curves. In this note we show how the problem of finding families of embedded curves is related to the problem of finding optimal formulas for $\mathbb{G}_1$ subgroup membership testing on the pairing-friendly curve side. Then we apply Smith's technique and Dai, Lin, Zhao, and Zhou criteria to obtain the formulas of embedded curves with KSS, and outline a generic algorithm for solving this problem in all cases. We provide two families of embedded curves for KSS18 and give examples of cryptographic size. We also suggest alternative embedded curves for BLS that have a seed of much lower Hamming weight than Sanso et al.~and much higher 2-valuation for fast FFT. In particular we highlight BLS12 curves which have a prime-order embedded curve that form a plain cycle (no pairing), and a second (plain) embedded curve in Montgomery form. A Brezing-Weng outer curve to have a pairing-friendly 2-chain is also possible like in the BLS12-377-BW6-761 construction. All curves have $j$-invariant 0 and an endomorphism for a faster arithmetic on the curve side.

Unclonable cryptography is concerned with leveraging the no-cloning principle to build cryptographic primitives that are otherwise impossible to achieve classically. Understanding the feasibility of unclonable encryption, one of the key unclonable primitives, satisfying indistinguishability security in the plain model has been a major open question in the area. So far, the existing constructions of unclonable encryption are either in the quantum random oracle model or are based on new conjectures.

We present a new approach to unclonable encryption via a reduction to a novel question about nonlocal quantum state discrimination: how well can non-communicating -- but entangled -- players distinguish between different distributions over quantum states? We call this task simultaneous state indistinguishability. Our main technical result is showing that the players cannot distinguish between each player receiving independently-chosen Haar random states versus all players receiving the same Haar random state.

We leverage this result to present the first construction of unclonable encryption satisfying indistinguishability security, with quantum decryption keys, in the plain model. We also show other implications to single-decryptor encryption and leakage-resilient secret sharing.

Multi-scalar multiplication (MSM) is one of the core components of many zero-knowledge proof systems, and a primary performance bottleneck for proof generation in these schemes. One major strategy to accelerate MSM is utilizing precomputation. Several algorithms (e.g., Pippenger and BGMW) and their variants have been proposed in this direction. In this paper, we revisit the recent precomputation-based MSM calculation method proposed by Luo, Fu and Gong at CHES 2023 and generalize their approach. In particular, we presented a general construction of optimal buckets. This improvement leads to significant performance improvements, which are verified by both theoretical analysis and experiments.

Attribute-based encryption (ABE) is a generalization of public-key encryption that enables fine-grained access control to encrypted data. In (ciphertext-policy) ABE, a central trusted authority issues decryption keys for attributes $x$ to users. In turn, ciphertexts are associated with a decryption policy $\mathcal{P}$. Decryption succeeds and recovers the encrypted message whenever $\mathcal{P}(x) = 1$. Recently, Hohenberger, Lu, Waters, and Wu (Eurocrypt 2023) introduced the notion of registered ABE, which is an ABE scheme without a trusted central authority. Instead, users generate their own public/secret keys (just like in public-key encryption) and then register their keys (and attributes) with a key curator. The key curator is a transparent and untrusted entity.

Currently, the best pairing-based registered ABE schemes support monotone Boolean formulas and an a priori bounded number of users $L$. A major limitation of existing schemes is that they require a (structured) common reference string (CRS) of size $L^2 \cdot |\mathcal{U}|$ where $|\mathcal{U}|$ is the size of the attribute universe. In other words, the size of the CRS scales quadratically with the number of users and multiplicatively with the size of the attribute universe. The large CRS makes these schemes expensive in practice and limited to a small number of users and a small universe of attributes.

In this work, we give two ways to reduce the CRS size in pairing-based registered ABE schemes. First, we introduce a combinatoric technique based on progression-free sets that enables registered ABE for the same class of policies but with a CRS whose size is sub-quadratic in the number of users. Asymptotically, we obtain a scheme where the CRS size is nearly linear in the number of users $L$ (i.e., $L^{1 + o(1)}$). If we take a more concrete-efficiency-oriented focus, we can instantiate our framework to obtain a construction with a CRS of size $L^{\log_2 3} \approx L^{1.6}$. For instance, in a scheme for 100,000 users, our approach reduces the CRS by a factor of over $115\times$ compared to previous approaches (and without incurring any overhead in encryption/decryption time). Our second approach for reducing the CRS size is to rely on a partitioning-based argument when arguing security of the registered ABE scheme. Previous approaches took a dual-system approach. Using a partitioning-based argument yields a registered ABE scheme where the size of the CRS is independent of the size of the attribute universe. The cost is the resulting scheme satisfies a weaker notion of static security. Our techniques for reducing the CRS size can be combined, and taken together, we obtain a pairing-based registered ABE scheme that supports monotone Boolean formulas with a CRS size of $L^{1 + o(1)}$. Notably, this is the first pairing-based registered ABE scheme that does not require imposing a bound on the size of the attribute universe during setup time.

As an additional application, we also show how to apply our techniques based on progression-free sets to the batch argument (BARG) for $\mathsf{NP}$ scheme of Waters and Wu (Crypto 2022) to obtain a scheme with a nearly-linear CRS without needing to rely on non-black-box bootstrapping techniques.

In this work we introduce PERK a compact digital signature scheme based on the hardness of a new variant of the Permuted Kernel Problem (PKP). PERK achieves the smallest signature sizes for any PKP-based scheme for NIST category I security with 6 kB, while obtaining competitive signing and verification timings. PERK also compares well with the general state-of-the-art. To substantiate those claims we provide an optimized constant-time AVX2 implementation, a detailed performance analysis and different size-performance trade-offs.

Technically our scheme is based on a Zero-Knowledge Proof of Knowledge following the MPC-in-the-Head paradigm and employing the Fiat-Shamir transform. We provide comprehensive security proofs, ensuring EUF-CMA security for PERK in the random oracle model. The efficiency of PERK greatly stems from our particular choice of PKP variant which allows for an application of the challenge-space amplification technique due to Bidoux-Gaborit (C2SI 2023).

Our second main contribution is an in-depth study of the hardness of the introduced problem variant. First, we establish a link between the hardness of our problem variant and the hardness of standard PKP. Then, we initiate an in-depth study of the concrete complexity to solve our variant. We present a novel algorithm which outperforms previous approaches for certain parameter regimes. However, the proximity of our problem variant to the standard variant can be controlled via a specific parameter. This enables us to effectively safeguard against our new attack and potential future extensions by a choice of parameters that ensures only a slight variation from standard PKP.

Lattice sieves are algorithms for finding short vectors in lattices. We present an implementation of two such sieves – known as “BGJ1” and “BDGL” in the literature – that scales across multiple servers (with varying success). This class of algorithms requires exponential memory which had put into question their ability to scale across sieving nodes. We discuss our architecture and optimisations and report experimental evidence of the efficiency of our approach.

Messaging Layer Security (MLS) is a Secure Group Messaging protocol that uses for its handshake a binary tree – called a Ratchet Tree – in order to reach a logarithmic communication cost w.r.t. the number of group members. This Ratchet Tree represents users as its leaves; therefore any change in the group membership results in adding or removing a leaf associated with that user. MLS consequently implements what we call a tree evolution mechanism, consisting in a user add algorithm – determining where to insert a new leaf – and a tree expansion process – stating how to increase the size of the tree when no space is available for a new user.

The tree evolution mechanism currently used by MLS is de- signed so that it naturally left-balances the Ratchet Tree. However, such a Ratchet Tree structure is often quite inefficient in terms of communication cost. Furthermore, one may wonder whether the binary tree used in that Ratchet Tree has a degree optimized for the features of a handshake in MLS – called a commit.

Therefore, we study in this paper how to improve the communication cost of a commit in MLS by considering both the tree evolution mechanism and the tree degree used for the Ratchet Tree. To do so, we determine the tree structure that optimizes its communication cost, and we propose optimized algorithms for both the user add and tree expansion processes, that allow to remain close to that optimal structure and thus to have a communication cost as close to optimal as possible.

We also determine the Ratchet Tree degree that is best suited to a given set of parameters induced by the encryption scheme used by MLS. This study shows that when using classical (i.e. pre-quantum) ciphersuites, a binary tree is indeed the most appropriate Ratchet Tree; nevertheless, when it comes to post-quantum algorithms, it generally becomes more interesting to use instead a ternary tree.

Our improvements do not change TreeKEM protocol and are easy to implement. With parameter sets corresponding to practical ciphersuites, they reduce TreeKEM’s communication cost by 5 to 10%. In particular, the 10% gain appears in the Post-Quantum setting – when both an optimized tree evolution mechanism and a ternary tree are necessary –, which is precisely the context where any optimization of the protocol’s communication cost is welcome, due to the important bandwidth of PQ encrypted communication.

Event date: 23 September to 27 September 2024

A transciphering framework, also known as hybrid homomorphic encryption, is a practical method of combining a homomorphic encryption~(HE) scheme with a symmetric cipher in the client-server model to reduce computational and communication overload on the client side. As a server homomorphically evaluates a symmetric cipher in this framework, new design rationales are required for ``HE-friendly'' ciphers that take into account the specific properties of the HE schemes.

In this paper, we propose a new TFHE-friendly cipher, dubbed $\mathsf{FRAST}$, with a TFHE-friendly round function based on a random S-box to minimize the number of rounds. The round function of $\mathsf{FRAST}$ can be efficiently evaluated in TFHE by a new optimization technique, dubbed double blind rotation. Combined with our new WoP-PBS method, the double blind rotation allows computing multiple S-box calls in the round function of $\mathsf{FRAST}$ at the cost of a single S-box call. In this way, $\mathsf{FRAST}$ enjoys $2.768$ (resp. $10.57$) times higher throughput compared to $\mathsf{Kreyvium}$ (resp. $\mathsf{Elisabeth}$) for TFHE keystream evaluation in the offline phase of the transciphering framework at the cost of slightly larger communication overload.

In this paper, we introduce a new approach to secure computing by implementing a platform that utilizes an NVMe-based system with an FPGA-based Torus FHE accelerator, SSD, and middleware on the host-side. Our platform is the first of its kind to offer complete secure computing capabilities for TFHE using an FPGA-based accelerator. We have defined secure computing instructions to evaluate 14-bit to 14-bit functions using TFHE, and our middleware allows for communication of ciphertexts, keys, and secure computing programs while invoking secure computing programs through NVMe commands with metadata. Our CMux gate implementation features an optimized NTT/INTT circuit that eliminates pre-NTT and post-INTT operations by pre-scaling and pre-transforming constant polynomials such as the bootstrapping and private-functional key-switching keys. Our performance evaluation demonstrates that our secure computing platform outperforms CPU-based and GPU-based platforms by 15 to 120 times and by 2.5 to 3 times, respectively, in gate bootstrapping execution time. Additionally, our platform uses 7 to 12 times less electric energy consumption during the gate bootstrapping execution time compared to CPU-based platforms and 1.15 to 1.2 times less compared to GPU-based platforms.

The best-known distinguisher on 7-round Ascon-128 and Ascon-128a AEAD uses a 60-dimensional cube where the nonce bits are set to be equal in the third and fourth rows of the Ascon state during initialization (Rohit et al. ToSC 2021/1). It was not known how to use this distinguisher to mount key-recovery attacks. In this paper, we investigate this problem using a new strategy called \textit{break-fix} for the conditional cube attack. The idea is to introduce slightly-modified cubes which increase the degrees of 7-round output bits to be more than 59 (break phase) and then find key conditions which can bring the degree back to 59 (fix phase). Using this idea, key-recovery attacks on 7-round Ascon-128, Ascon-128a and Ascon-80pq are proposed. The attacks have better time/memory complexities than the existing attacks, and in some cases improve the weak-key attacks as well.