International Association
for Cryptologic Research

Cryptographic proof systems have a plethora of applications: from building other cryptographic tools (e.g., malicious security for MPC protocols) to concrete settings such as private transactions or rollups. In several settings it is important for proof systems to be non-malleable: an adversary should not to be able to modify a proof they have observed into another for a statement for which they do not know the witness. Proof systems that have been deployed in practice should arguably satisfy this notion: it is crucial in settings such as transaction systems and in order to securely compose proofs with other cryptographic protocols. As a consequence, results on non-malleability should keep up with designs of proofs being deployed. Recently, Arun et al. proposed $\mathsf{Jolt}$ (Eurocrypt 2024), arguably the first efficient proof system whose architecture is based on the lookup singularity approach (Barry Whitehat, 2022). This approach consists in representing a general computation as a series of table lookups. The final result is a SNARK for a Virtual Machine execution (or SNARK VM). Both SNARK VMs and lookup-singularity SNARKs are architectures with enormous potential and will probably be adopted more and more in the next years (and they already are). As of today, however, there is no literature regarding the non-malleability of SNARK VMs. The goal of this work is to fill this gap by providing both concrete non-malleability results and a set of technical tools for a more general study of SNARK VMs security (as well as "modular" SNARKs in general). As a concrete result, we study the non-malleability of (an idealized version of) $\mathsf{Jolt}$ and its fundamental building block, the lookup argument $\mathsf{Lasso}$. While connecting our new result on the non-malleability of $\mathsf{Lasso}$ to that of $\mathsf{Jolt}$, we develop a set of tools that enable the composition of non-malleable SNARKs. We believe this toolbox to be valuable in its own right.

As the industry prepares for the transition to post-quantum secure public key cryptographic algorithms, vulnerability analysis of their implementations is gaining importance. A theoretically secure cryptographic algorithm should also be able to withstand the challenges of physical attacks in real-world environments. MAYO is a candidate in the ongoing first round of the NIST post-quantum standardization process for selecting additional digital signature schemes. This paper demonstrates three first-order single-execution fault injection attacks on a MAYO implementation in an ARM Cortex-M4 processor. By using voltage glitching to disrupt the computation of the vinegar seed during the signature generation, we enable the recovery of the secret key directly from the faulty signatures. Our experimental results show that the success rates of the fault attacks in a single execution are 36%, 82%, and 99%, respectively. They emphasize the importance of developing countermeasures against fault attacks prior to the widespread deployment of post-quantum algorithms like MAYO.

Non-interactive zero-knowledge (NIZK) proofs allow a prover to convince a verifier about the validity of an NP-statement by sending a single message and without disclosing any additional information (besides the validity of the statement). Single-message cryptographic proofs are very versatile, which has made them widely used both in theory and in practice. This is particularly true for succinct proofs, where the length of the message is sublinear in the size of the NP relation. This versatility, unfortunately, comes at a price, since any NIZK proof system requires some form of setup, like a common reference string. One way to circumvent the need for a setup is by relying on a Random Oracle. Unfortunately, if the Random Oracle is modeled as a Global resource that the simulator is not allowed to program, then it is impossible to obtain a secure NIZK. This impossibility has been circumvented by allowing the simulator (and the real-world adversary) to program the RO, and allowing the honest parties to check, via a special interface, if the RO outputs have been programmed. In this work, we show that this impossibility can be circumvented by meaningfully weakening the Universal Composability framework following the model proposed by Broadnax et al. (Eurocrypt 2017). In this model, the ideal world functionalities are allowed to interact with oracles that have quasi-polynomial time capabilities. As our main result, we propose the first composable NIZK proof system that relies on a global (non-programmable) random oracle as its only form of setup. The NIZK scheme we propose is witness-succinct (with proofs logarithmic in the size of the witness). Our results break both the barrier of programmability of the random oracle and of polylogarithmic proof size for UC-secure NIZKs with transparent setups. We are able to construct our NIZK using the framework proposed by Ganesh et al. (Eurocrypt 2023), which requires—among other building blocks—a polynomial commitment scheme with special features and a polynomial encoding scheme (a primitive that appropriately masks a witness as a polynomial). As a core technical contribution, we show a polynomial commitment of this type using a basic component of Bulletproofs as a building block, as well as a polynomial encoding based on techniques completely different from the ones from Ganesh et al..

Succinct arguments of knowledge allow an untrusted prover to establish that they know a witness for an NP relation. Many recent efficient constructions of such schemes work over arithmetic computations expressed in finite fields. Several common settings, however, have an extremely simple representation when expressed over the integers (e.g., RSA signatures/accumulators, range checks for committed values, computations over rational numbers). Efficient arguments of knowledge working natively over $\mathbb{Z}$ could be applied to such computations without the overhead from emulating integer arithmetic over a finite field. We propose the first native construction of SNARKs over the integers that is fully succinct, thus resolving an open problem from Towa and Vergnaud (Asiacrypt 2020). By fully succinct, we mean that \textit{both} the proof size and the verifier's running time should be sublinear in both $|\vec w|$—the size of the witness as a vector of integers—and $\log_2 \lVert \vec w \rVert_\infty$—the size in bits of the largest integer in the witness vector (in absolute value). As a stepping stone for our results we provide a general theoretical framework for building succinct arguments over the integers. Its most attractive feature is that it allows to reuse already existing constructions of SNARKs in a modular way and can be used as a starting point for constructions following up our work. We build these systematic foundations by leveraging a common technique in theoretical computer science—fingerprinting—and applying it to a new setting. Our framework consists of two main ingredients: idealized protocols and polynomial commitments such that an object ``committed over the integers'' can however be ``queried modulo $q$'', for a randomly sampled prime $q$. We obtain our final construction, $\mathbb{Z}$aratan, by lifting the $\mathsf{Spartan}$ construction (Setty, CRYPTO 2020) to the integers and applying a form of polynomial commitment based on the techniques from DARK (Bünz et al., Eurocrypt 2020). $\mathbb{Z}$aratan has a transparent setup, is proven secure in the generic group model for groups of unknown order and can be heuristically made non-interactive in the ROM via the Fiat-Shamir transform.

We use the HHL algorithm to retrieve a quantum state holding the algebraic normal formal of a Boolean function. Unlike the standard HHL applications, we do not describe the cipher as an exponentially big system of equations. Rather, we perform a set of small matrix inversions which corresponds to the Boolean Möbius transform. This creates a superposition holding information about the ANF in the form: $\ket{\mathcal{A}_{f}} =\frac{1}{C} \sum_{I=0}^{2^n-1} c_I \ket{I}$, where $c_I$ is the coefficient of the ANF and $C$ is a scaling factor. The procedure has a time complexity of $\mathcal{O}(n)$ for a Boolean function with $n$ bit input. We also propose two approaches how some information about the ANF can be extracted from such a state.

Masking is a sound countermeasure to protect against differential power analysis. Since the work by Balasch et al. in ASIACRYPT 2012, inner product masking has been explored as an alternative to the well known Boolean masking. In CARDIS 2017, Poussier et al. showed that inner product masking achieves higher-order security versus Boolean masking, for the same shared size, in the bit-probing model. Wang et al. in TCHES 2020 verified the inner product masking's security order amplification in practice and proposed new gadgets for inner product masking. Finally, Wu et al. in TCHES 2022 showed that this security amplification comes from the bit-probing model, but that Wang al.'s gadgets are not higher-order bit-probing secure reducing the computation's practical security. The authors concluded their work with the open question of providing an inner product multiplication gadget which maintains the masking's bit-probing security, and conjectured that such gadget maintains the practical security order amplification of the masking during its computation.

In this paper, we answer positively to Wu et al.'s open problems. We are the first to present a multiplication gadget for inner product masking which is proven secure in the bit-level probing model using the t-Strong Non-Interference (SNI) property. Moreover, we provide practical evidence that the gadget indeed maintains the security amplification of its masking. This is done via an evaluation of an assembly implementation of the gadget on an ARM Cortex-M4 core. We used this implementation to take leakage measurements and show no leakage happens for orders below the gadget's bit-probing security level either for its univariate or multivariate analysis.

The traditional definition of fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) is not composable, i.e., it does not guarantee that evaluating two (or more) homomorphic computations in a sequence produces correct results. We formally define and investigate a stronger notion of homomorphic encryption which we call "fully composable homomorphic encryption", or "composable FHE". The definition is both simple and powerful: it does not directly involve the evaluation of multiple functions, and yet it supports the arbitrary composition of homomorphic evaluations. On the technical side, we compare the new definition with other definitions proposed in the past, proving both implications and separations, and show how the "bootstrapping" technique of (Gentry, STOC 2009) can be formalized as a method to transform a (non-composable, circular secure) homomorphic encryption scheme into a fully composable one. We use this formalization of bootstrapping to formulate a number of conjectures and open problems.

Decentralized storage networks, including IPFS and Filecoin, have created a marketplace where individuals exchange storage space for profit. These networks employ protocols that reliably ensure data storage providers accurately store data without alterations, safeguarding the interests of storage purchasers. However, these protocols lack an effective and equitable payment mechanism for data retrieval, particularly when multiple data queriers are involved. This necessitates a protocol that ensures both data integrity and fair compensation for data providers.

In decentralized storage, data is fragmented into small blocks and stored across multiple nodes, a process known as data swarming. Due to this property, traditional data exchange protocols are inadequate in terms of communication and economic efficiency.

We propose the Proof of Unified Data Retrieval protocol (PoUDR). PoUDR incorporates ZK-SNARK to facilitate a fair data exchange protocol. PoUDR reduces the number of blockchain transactions for both single block and data swarming retrieval. The protocol requires only a single key-revealing transaction submitted by the provider to the blockchain for each data block. This architecture allows for further optimization of transaction numbers through a batched proof technique on the provider's side. This approach necessitates only $N_P$ transactions within a specific time frame when data consisting of $N_D$ blocks, provided by $N_P$ providers, is queried by $N_Q$ queriers.

This work provides a comprehensive definition for Secure Swarming Data Exchange (SSDE), including security assumptions. Also it offers a detailed game-based security analysis for the PoUDR protocol. Moreover, the PoUDR protocol has been fully integrated into the Bitswap protocol (IPFS). Within this integration, our proposed Relaxed Groth16 algorithm addresses the significant technical challenge of generating zero-knowledge proofs, leading to substantial cost reductions for overall feasibility of secure data retrieval in decentralized storage networks.

HEonGPU is a high-performance library designed to optimize Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) operations on Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). By leveraging the parallel processing capac- ity of GPUs, HEonGPU significantly reduces the computational overhead typically associated with FHE by executing complex operation concurrently. This allows for faster execution of homomorphic computations on encrypted data, enabling real-time applications in privacy-preserving machine learn- ing and secure data processing. A key advantage of HEonGPU lies in its multi-stream architecture, which not only allows parallel processing of tasks to improve throughput but also eliminates the over- head of data transfers between the host device (i.e., CPU) and GPU. By efficiently managing data within the GPU using multi-streams, HEonGPU minimizes the need for repeated memory transfers, further enhancing performance. HEonGPU’s GPU-optimized design makes it ideal for large-scale encrypted computations, providing users with reduced latency and higher performance across various FHE schemes.

There has been a recent interest to develop and standardize Robust Authenticated Encryption (Robust AE) schemes. NIST, for example, is considering an Accordion mode (a wideblock tweakable blockcipher), with Robust AE as a primary application. On the other hand, recent attacks and applications suggest that encryption needs to be committing. Indeed, committing security isalso a design consideration in the Accordion mode. Yet it is unclear how to build a Robust AE with committing security.

In this work, we give a modular solution for this problem. We first show how to transform any wideblock tweakable blockcipher TE to a Robust AE scheme SE that commits just the key. The overhead is cheap, just a few finite-field multiplications and blockcipher calls. If one wants to commit the entire encryption context, one can simply hash the context to derive a 256-bit subkey, and uses SE on that subkey. The use of 256-bit key on SE only means that it has to rely on AES-256 but doesn't require TE to have 256-bit key.

Our approach frees the Accordion designs from consideration of committing security. Moreover, it gives a big saving for several key-committing applications that don't want to pay the inherent hashing cost of full committing.

State-of-the-art database implementations offer a wide range of functionalities and impressive performances while supporting highly concurrent loads. However they all rely on the server knowing the content of the database, which raises issues when sensitive information is being stored on a server that cannot be trusted. Encrypting documents before sending them to a remote server solves the confidentiality issue at the cost of loosing the keyword search functionality. Cryptographic primitives such as Symmetric Searchable Encryption (SSE) schemes have been proposed to recover this functionality. However, no SSE construction properly defines correctness and successfully guarantees security in a concurrent setting. This paper attempts a first step in this direction by recommending linearizability as the standard notion of correctness for a concurrent SSE. We study the impact of concurrency on security and stress the need for finer-grained security models. Hence, we propose the log-security model that guarantees security against an adversary having access to persistency-related logs, fixing a blind spot in the snapshot model while capturing security in a concurrent setting. We also build the first concurrent SSE solution proven correct and secure in a concurrent setting, that can be implemented on top of any database. Our scheme proved to be fast thanks to optimal wait-free search operations and sequentially-optimal, lock-free modifications, that both execute under one micro-second per binding, while only incurring a 13.3% storage expansion.

FAPI 2.0 is a suite of Web protocols developed by the OpenID Foundation's FAPI Working Group (FAPI WG) for third-party data sharing and digital identity in high-risk environments. Even though the specifications are not completely finished, several important entities have started to adopt the FAPI 2.0 protocols, including Norway's national HelseID, Australia's Consumer Data Standards, as well as private companies like Authlete and Australia-based connectID; the predecessor FAPI 1.0 is in widespread use with millions of users.

The FAPI WG asked us to accompany the standardization of the FAPI 2.0 protocols with a formal security analysis to proactively identify vulnerabilities before widespread deployment and to provide formal security guarantees for the standards. In this paper, we report on our analysis and findings.

Our analysis is based on a detailed model of the Web infrastructure, the so-called Web Infrastructure Model (WIM), which we extend to be able to carry out our analysis of the FAPI 2.0 protocols including important extensions like FAPI-CIBA. Based on the (extended) WIM and formalizations of the security goals and attacker model laid out in the FAPI 2.0 specifications, we provide a formal model of the protocols and carry out a formal security analysis, revealing several attacks. We have worked with the FAPI WG to fix the protocols, resulting in several amendments to the specifications. With these changes in place, we have adjusted our protocol model and formally proved that the security properties hold true under the strong attacker model defined by the FAPI WG.

In classical cryptography, one-way functions (OWFs) are the minimal assumption, while recent active studies have demonstrated that OWFs are not necessarily the minimum assumption in quantum cryptography. Several new primitives have been introduced such as pseudorandom unitaries (PRUs), pseudorandom function-like state generators (PRFSGs), pseudorandom state generators (PRSGs), one-way state generators (OWSGs), one-way puzzles (OWPuzzs), and EFI pairs. They are believed to be weaker than OWFs, but they still imply many useful applications such as private-key quantum money schemes, secret-key encryption, message authentication codes, digital signatures, commitments, and multiparty computations. Now that the possibility of quantum cryptography without OWFs has opened up, the most important goal in the field is to provide them with concrete instantiations. For example, in classical cryptography, there are many instantiations of OWFs based on concrete hardness assumptions, such as the hardness of discrete logarithms or learning with errors. The study of generic primitives is justified by the existence of concrete instantiations. On the other hand, in quantum cryptography, all known constructions of those primitives are only from OWFs. We therefore have the following important open problem: Do they have instantiations based on some concrete hardness assumptions that will not imply OWFs? Ideally, the assumptions should be the ones that are studied in other contexts than cryptography. In this paper, we give a candidate answer to the question by showing that quantum-average-hardness of GapK problem implies the existence of OWPuzzs. A GapK problem is a promise problem to decide whether a given bit string has a small Kolmogorov complexity or not. Its quantum-average-hardness means that an instance is sampled from a quantum-polynomial-time-samplable distribution, and no quantum-polynomial-time algorithm can solve the problem with high probability. As far as we know, this is the first time that a ``Microcrypt'' primitive is constructed based on concrete hardness assumptions that do not seem to imply OWFs. Moreover, the assumptions are studied in other contexts than cryptography, especially in the field of meta-complexity. (Note: During the preparation of this manuscript, Khurana and Tomer \cite{cryptoeprint:2024/1490} uploaded a concurrent work.)

Stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency pegged to another asset to maintain a stable price, have become an important part of the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Prior studies have primarily focused on examining the security of stablecoins from technical and theoretical perspectives, with limited investigation into users’ risk perceptions and security behaviors in stablecoin practices. To address this research gap, we conducted a mixed-method study that included constructing a stablecoin interaction framework based on the literature, which informed the design of our interview protocol, semi-structured interviews (n=21), and Reddit data analysis (9,326 posts). We found that participants see stable value and regulatory compliance as key security advantages of stablecoins over other cryptocurrencies. However, participants also raised concerns about centralization risks in fiat-backed stablecoins, perceived challenges in crypto-backed stablecoins due to limited reliance on fully automated execution, and confusion regarding the complex mechanisms of algorithmic stablecoins. We proposed improving user education and optimizing mechanisms to address these concerns and promote the safer use of stablecoins.

In this paper, we introduce a new method to construct a signature scheme based on the subfield bilinear collision problem published at Crypto 2024. We use techniques based on vector oblivious linear evaluation (VOLE) to significantly improve the running time and signature size of the scheme compared to the MPC-in-the-head version.

Quantum computational advantage refers to an existence of computational tasks that are easy for quantum computing but hard for classical one. Unconditionally showing quantum advantage is beyond our current understanding of complexity theory, and therefore some computational assumptions are needed. Which complexity assumption is necessary and sufficient for quantum advantage? In this paper, we show that inefficient-verifier proofs of quantumness (IV-PoQ) exist if and only if classically-secure one-way puzzles (OWPuzzs) exist. As far as we know, this is the first time that a complete cryptographic characterization of quantum advantage is obtained. IV-PoQ capture various types of quantum advantage previously studied, such as sampling advantage and searching advantage. Previous work [Morimae and Yamakawa 2024] showed that IV-PoQ can be constructed from OWFs, but a construction of IV-PoQ from weaker assumptions was left open. Our result solves the open problem. OWPuzzs are one of the most fundamental quantum cryptographic primitives implied by many quantum cryptographic primitives weaker than one-way functions (OWFs). The equivalence between IV-PoQ and classically-secure OWPuzzs therefore highlights that if there is no quantum advantage, then these fundamental primitives do not exist. The equivalence also means that quantum advantage is an example of the applications of OWPuzzs. Except for commitments, no application of OWPuzzs was known before. Our result shows that quantum advantage is another application of OWPuzzs. Moreover, it is the first quantum computation classical communication (QCCC) application of OWPuzzs.

In this paper, we introduce the notion of relaxed lattice-based programmable hash function (RPHF), which is a novel variant of lattice-based programmable hash functions (PHFs). Lattice-based PHFs, together with preimage trapdoor functions (TDFs), have been widely utilized (implicitly or explicitly) in the construction of adaptively secure identity-based encryption (IBE) schemes. The preimage length and the output length of the underlying PHF and TDF together determine the user secret key and ciphertext lengths of the IBE schemes. However, the current lattice-based PHF definition imposes the restriction that the preimage length of TDF in the IBE schemes cannot be too short, hindering the utilization of size-efficient NTRU TDF. To overcome this hurdle, RPHF relaxes the hash key distribution requirement in the definition of PHF from statistical indistinguishability to computational indistinguishability. This relaxation eliminates limitations on the preimage length of underlying TDFs in IBE, enabling the construction of IBEs from NTRU TDFs. We introduce two instantiations of RPHF: the first produces a hash output length of $2$ ring elements, with a hash key size linear to the input length, and the second yields an output length of $14$ ring elements, with a hash key size proportional to the square root of the input length. Building upon these RPHF instantiations, we propose two adaptively secure lattice-based IBE schemes with ciphertext lengths of $5$ and $17$ ring elements and user secret key lengths of $4$ and $16$ ring elements, respectively. The length of the IBE master public key is roughly equivalent to the size of the hash key of the underlying RPHF. In comparison to existing IBE constructions, our proposed schemes achieve a significant reduction (over an order of magnitude) in ciphertext and secret key sizes. Notably, state-of-the-art constructions from ideal lattices exhibit secret key and ciphertext sizes over 100 ring elements, making our proposed schemes highly efficient. Moreover, the master public key sizes of our IBEs remain comparable.

We present a new and efficient method to obtain circuit privacy for lattice-based linearly homomorphic encryptions (LHE). In particular, our method does not involve noise-flooding with exponetially large errors or iterative bootstrapping. As a direct result, we obtain a semi-honest oblivious linear evaluation (OLE) protocol with the same efficiency, reducing the communication cost of the prior state of the art by 50%. Consequently, the amortized time of our protocol improves the prior work by 33% under 100Mbps network setting. Our semi-honest OLE is the first to achieve both concrete efficiency and asymptotic quasi-optimality. Together with an extension of the recent zero-knowledge proof of plaintext knowledge, our LHE yields actively-secure OLE with 2.7x reduced communication from the prior work. When applied to Overdrive (Eurocrypt '18), an MPC preprocessing protocol, our method provides 1.4x improvement in communication over the state of the art.

In decentralized finance (DeFi), the public availability of pending transactions presents significant privacy concerns, enabling market manipulation through miner extractable value (MEV). MEV occurs when block proposers exploit the ability to reorder, omit, or include transactions, causing financial loss to users from frontrunning. Recent research has focused on encrypting pending transactions, hiding transaction data until block finalization. To this end, Choudhuri et al. (USENIX '24) introduce an elegant new primitive called Batched Threshold Encryption (BTE) where a batch of encrypted transactions is selected by a committee and only decrypted after block finalization. Crucially, BTE achieves low communication complexity during decryption and guarantees that all encrypted transactions outside the batch remain private. An important shortcoming of their construction is, however, that it progresses in epochs and requires a costly setup in MPC for each batch decryption. In this work, we introduce a novel BTE scheme addressing the limitations by eliminating the need for an expensive epoch setup while achieving practical encryption and decryption times. Additionally, we explore the problem of how users can coordinate their transactions, which is crucial for the functionality of the system. Along the way, we present several optimizations and trade-offs between communication and computational complexity that allow us to achieve practical performance on standard hardware ($<2$ ms for encryption and $<440$ ms for decrypting $512$ transactions). Finally, we prove our constructions secure in a model that captures practical attacks on MEV-prevention mechanisms.

At Eurocrypt 2015, Zahur, Rosulek, and Evans proposed the model of Linear Garbling Schemes. This model proved a $2\kappa$-bit lower bound of ciphertexts for a broad class of garbling schemes. Since then, several methods have been developed that bypass this lower bound, albeit with a notable limitation: Their reliance on specifically correlated input wire labels restricts their applicability across most gates. At Crypto 2021, Rosulek and Roy presented the innovative "three-halves" garbling scheme in which AND gates cost $1.5\kappa+5$ bits and XOR gates are free. A noteworthy aspect of their scheme is the slicing-and-dicing technique, which is applicable universally to all AND gates when garbling a boolean circuit. Following this revelation, Rosulek and Roy presented several open problems. Our research primarily addresses one of them: ``Is $1.5\kappa$ bits optimal for garbled AND gates in a more inclusive model than Linear Garbling Schemes?''

In this paper, we propose the Bitwise Garbling Schemes, a model that seamlessly incorporates the slicing-and-dicing technique. Our key revelation is that $1.5\kappa$ bits is indeed optimal for arbitrary garbled AND gates in our model. Since Rosulek and Roy also suggested another problem which questions the necessity of free-XOR, we explore constructions without free-XOR and prove a $2\kappa$-bit lower bound. Therefore, sacrificing compatibility with free-XOR does not lead to a more efficient scheme.