IACR News
Here you can see all recent updates to the IACR webpage. These updates are also available:
08 January 2018
Peter Scholl
Our main technique is a novel twist on the classic OT extension of Ishai et al. (Crypto 2003), using an additively key-homomorphic PRF to reduce interaction. We first use this to construct a protocol for a large batch of 1-out-of-$n$ OTs on random inputs, with amortized $o(1)$ communication. Converting these to 1-out-of-2 OTs on chosen strings requires logarithmic communication. The key-homomorphic PRF used in the protocol can be instantiated under the learning with errors assumption with exponential modulus-to-noise ratio.
Lucas Schabh\"user, Johannes Buchmann , Patrick Struck
San Ling, Khoa Nguyen, Huaxiong Wang, Yanhong Xu
In this work, we introduce the first constant-size group signature from lattices, which means that the size of signatures produced by the scheme is independent of $N$ and only depends on the security parameter $\lambda$. More precisely, in our scheme, the sizes of signatures, public key and users' secret keys are all of order $\widetilde{\mathcal{O}}(\lambda)$. The scheme supports dynamic enrollment of users and is proven secure in the random oracle model under the Ring Short Integer Solution (RSIS) and Ring Learning With Errors (RLWE) assumptions. At the heart of our design is a zero-knowledge argument of knowledge of a valid message-signature pair for the Ducas-Micciancio signature scheme (Crypto 2014), that may be of independent interest.
Stanislaw Jarecki, Hugo Krawczyk, Maliheh Shirvanian, Nitesh Saxena
Our solution builds a TFA scheme using any Device-Enhanced PAKE, defined by Jarecki et al., and any Short Authenticated String (SAS) Message Authentication, defined by Vaudenay. We show an efficient instantiation of this modular construction which utilizes any password-based client-server authentication method, with or without reliance on public-key infrastructure. The security of the proposed scheme is proven in a formal model that we formulate as an extension of the traditional PAKE model.
We also report on a prototype implementation of our schemes, including TLS-based and PKI-free variants, as well as several instantiations of the SAS mechanism, all demonstrating the practicality of our approach.
Markus Jakobsson
Markus Jakobsson
Lin Lyu, Shengli Liu, Shuai Han, Dawu Gu
In this work, we focus on constructing PKE with tight SIM-SO-CCA security based on standard assumptions. We characterize securities needed for key encapsulation mechanism (KEM) and show how to transform these securities into SIM-SO-CCA security of PKE through a tight security reduction, while the construction of PKE from KEM follows the general framework proposed by Liu and Paterson (PKC'15). We present two KEM constructions with tight securities based on the Matrix Decision Diffie-Hellman assumption. These KEMs in turn lead to two tightly SIM-SO-CCA secure PKE schemes. One of them enjoys not only tight security but also compact public key.
07 January 2018
Johannes Blömer, Fabian Eidens, Jakob Juhnke
Muslum Ozgur Ozmen, Rouzbeh Behnia, Attila A. Yavuz
In this paper, we propose a new digital signature scheme that we refer to as Compact Energy and Delay-aware Authentication (CEDA). In CEDA, signature generation and verification only require a small-constant number of multiplications and Pseudo Random Function (PRF) calls. Therefore, it achieves the lowest end-to-end delay among its counterparts. Our implementation results on an ARM processor and commodity hardware show that CEDA has the most efficient signature generation on both platforms, while offering a fast signature verification. Among its delay-aware counterparts, CEDA has smaller private key with a constant-size signature. All these advantages are achieved with the cost of a larger public key. This is a highly favorable trade-off for applications wherein the verifier is not memory-limited. We open-sourced our implementation of CEDA to enable its broad testing and adaptation.
Gilad Asharov, Yehuda Lindell
Martin Strand
We build our shuffle on the ideas and techniques of Groth's 2010 shuffle, but make necessary modifications for a less ideal setting where the randomness and ciphertexts admit no group structure.
The protocol relies heavily on the properties of the so-called gadget matrices, so we have included a detailed introduction to these.
Christopher Carr, Anamaria Costache, Gareth T. Davies, Kristian Gjøsteen, Martin Strand
We give two main contributions. Firstly, we present a bootstrapping-like protocol to switch from one FHE scheme to another. The first scheme has efficient homomorphic capabilities; the second admits a simple zero-knowledge protocol. To illustrate this, we use the Brakerski et al. (ITCS, 2012) scheme for the former, and Gentry's original scheme (STOC, 2009) for the latter. Secondly, we present a simple one-shot zero-knowledge protocol for verifiable decryption using Gentry's original FHE scheme.
Zhengan Huang, Junzuo Lai, Wenbin Chen, Man Ho Au, Zhen Peng, Jin Li
06 January 2018
Happy New Year and best wishes to everyone for 2018! Here is an update on recent developments in the IACR.
To start out with some statistics, currently the IACR has 1500 members for 2018. All 2017 IACR conferences together counted almost 1900 attendees in total and published 359 papers. As you can read next, these numbers will grow in the future.
RWC 2018:
One important development for the IACR in 2017 was the establishment of the IACR Symposium on Real World Crypto (RWC), by joining forces with the former Real-World Crypto conference. According to the traditional schedule of RWC this event will now open IACR's calendar year. I am looking forward to seeing many of you at the first IACR-RWC, which takes place in Zurich on January 10-12. RWC 2018 has been completely booked out for weeks already, we expect 600 attendees. This is the largest number of registrations for an IACR event ever.
Elections:
The Board's composition changes for 2018, following the recent election: Josh Benaloh leaves and Tancrède Lepoint joins.
Let me take this occasion to thank Josh for his outstanding and long-lasting service to the IACR, with roles as secretary, Crypto general chair, the Board's program-chair contact and more. I could trace it back to him serving as secretary starting 1999. He pushed hard to make IACR actually use the cryptographic protocols he was interested in, and he succeeded when IACR adopted Helios online voting for elections. As president I was always glad to count on his deep understanding of votes and elections.
In the regular schedule General Chairs Steve Myers and S.M. Yiu will leave, Marc Fischlin, Muthu V., and Mitsuru Matsui join in 2018. I would like to thank all General Chairs of the 2017 conferences and their teams for their tremendous work.
Minutes from meetings of the Board of Directors:
As always you can find information from IACR Board of Directors in the minutes of the meetings available online (https://iacr.org/docs/minutes/minutes.html). Please take a look to understand the current projects and challenges of IACR.
Policy on Conflicts of Interest:
The IACR Board of Directors has recently finalized a formal Policy on Conflicts of Interest. This was discussed already at Eurocrypt, Crypto and Asiacrypt. You can find the text online under https://iacr.org/docs/.
To cite from the document: In particular, the authors of each submission are asked during the submission process to identify all members of the Program Committee who have an automatic conflict of interest (COI) with the submission. A reviewer and an author have an automatic COI if one was the thesis advisor/supervisor to the other, or if they've shared an institutional affiliation within the last two years, or if they've published two or more joint authored works within the last three years, or if they are in the same family. Any further COIs of importance should be separately disclosed. It is the responsibility of all authors to ensure correct reporting of COI information. Submissions with incorrect or incomplete COI information may be rejected without consideration of their merits.
Best regards,
Christian Cachin
IACR President
Federico Giacon, Felix Heuer, Bertram Poettering
We introduce KEM combiners as a way to garner trust from different KEM constructions, rather than relying on a single one: We present efficient black-box constructions that, given any set of `ingredient' KEMs, yield a new KEM that is (CCA) secure as long as at least one of the ingredient KEMs is.
As building blocks our constructions use cryptographic hash functions and blockciphers. Some corresponding security proofs require idealized models for these primitives, others get along on standard assumptions.
Benedikt Auerbach, Mihir Bellare, Eike Kiltz
Ali El Kaafarani, Shuichi Katsumata
Yu Chen, Baodong Qin, Haiyang Xue
We show that (ABO)-RLFs admit efficient constructions from both a variety of number-theoretic assumptions and hash proof system (HPS) for subset membership problems satisfying natural algebraic properties. Thanks to the relaxations on functionality, the constructions enjoy much compact key size and better computational efficiency than that of (ABO)-LTFs.
We demonstrate the utility of RLFs and their extensions in the leakage-resilient cryptography. As a special case of RLFs, lossy functions imply leakage-resilient injective one-way functions with optimal leakage rate $1-o(1)$. ABO-RLFs (or OT-RLFs) immediately imply leakage-resilient one-time message authentication code (MAC) with optimal leakage rate $1-o(1)$. ABO-RLFs together with HPS give rise to leakage-resilient chosen-ciphertext (CCA) secure key encapsulation mechanisms (KEM) (this approach extends naturally to the identity-based setting). Combining the construction of ABO-RLFs from HPS, this gives the first leakage-resilient CCA-secure public-key encryption (PKE) with optimal leakage rate based solely on HPS, and thus goes beyond the barrier posed by Dodis et al. (Asiacrypt 2010).
05 January 2018
University of Colorado Colorado Springs/National CyberSecurity Center
The overall workload is 50% academic in the Computer Science Department, conducting teaching, research & development and professional service in cybersecurity as faculty member. The remaining 50% of workload will be to develop research, teaching, and training opportunities in collaboration with National Cybersecurity Center (NCC). In particular, the candidate will help plan and design the infrastructure of the UCCS building housing NCC and to develop the programs for the center. This will include creating partnerships with institutions across the nation and advancing the cybersecurity industry. It will include fostering opportunities to partner closely with industry to drive student engagement and learning opportunities in cybersecurity. The position requires the ability to obtain a US security clearance to conduct classified research.
Closing date for applications: 1 March 2018
Contact: Posting Contact Name: Terry Boult
Posting Contact Email: tboult at uccs.edu
More information: https://cu.taleo.net/careersection/2/jobdetail.ftl?job=11128
TU Darmstadt
Topics of particular interest include (but are not limited to):
- Secure cryptographic implementations
- Leakage/tamper resilient cryptography
- Distributed cryptography
- Blockchains and cryptocurrencies
The application must include a curriculum vitae, a short research statement, and names of 1 person (2 in case of PostDocs) that can provide reference about the applicant and her/his work. In case of PostDoc applications, the candidate shall be able to show solid expertise in cryptography/IT Security illustrated in form of publications at major crypto/security venues such as CRYPTO, EUROCRYPT, ASIACRYPT, TCC, PKC, CHES, FC, ACM CCS, IEEE S&P, USENIX Security, NDSS etc.
The positions are available immediately and salary is internationally competitive based on the TU Darmstadt’s wage agreement (TV-TUD) and includes social benefits. TU Darmstadt offers excellent working environment in the heart of the Rhein-Main area, and has a strong institute for research on IT security with more than 300 researchers working on all aspects of cybersecurity.
Review of applications starts immediately until the positions are filled.
Closing date for applications: 28 February 2018
Contact: Prof. Sebastian Faust, Contact: sebastian.faust(at)cs(dot)tu-darmstadt(dot)de