International Association
for Cryptologic Research

One of the NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization Process Round 2 candidates is the NewHope cryptosystem, which is a suite of two RLWE based key encapsulation mechanisms. Recently, four key reuse attacks were proposed against NewHope by Bauer et al., Qin et al., Bhasin et al. and Okada et al. In these attacks, the adversary has access to the key mismatch oracle which tells her if a given ciphertext decrypts to a given message under the targeted secret key. Previous attacks either require more than 26 000 queries to the oracle or they never recover the whole secret key. In this paper, we present a new attack against the NewHope cryptosystem in these key reuse situations. Our attack recovers the whole secret key with the probability of 100% and requires less than 3 200 queries on average. Our work improves state-of-the-art results for NewHope and makes the comparison with other candidates more relevant.

This work initiates a formal study of signcryption in the quantum setting. We start with formulating suitable security definitions for confidentiality and authenticity of signcryption both in insider and outsider models against quantum adversaries. We investigate the quantum security of generic constructions of signcryption schemes based on three paradigms, viz., encrypt-then-sign (EtS), sign-then-encrypt (StE) and commit-then-encrypt-and-sign (CtE&S). In the insider model, we show that the quantum variants of the classical results hold in the quantum setting with an exception in the StE paradigm. However, in outsider model we need to consider an intermediate setting in which the adversary is given quantum access to unsigncryption oracle but classical access to signcryption oracle. In two-user outsider model, as in the classical setting, we show that post-quantum CPA security of the base encryption scheme is amplified in the EtS paradigm if the base signature scheme satisfies a stronger definition. We prove an analogous result in the StE paradigm. Interestingly, in the multi-user setting, our results strengthen the known classical results. Furthermore, our results for the EtS and StE paradigms in the two-user outsider model also extend to the setting of authenticated encryption. In this course, we point out a flaw in the proof of quantum security of authenticated encryption in the EtS paradigm given in a recent paper. We briefly discuss the difficulties in analyzing the full quantum security of signcryption in outsider model. Finally, we briefly discuss concrete instantiations in various paradigms utilising some available candidates of quantum secure encryption and signature schemes.

To expand capacity, many resource-constrained industrial devices encrypt and outsource their private data to public clouds, employing a searchable encryption (SE) scheme that provides efficient search service directly to encrypted data. Current tree-based SE schemes can do this and support sublinear encrypted Boolean queries. However, they all suffer from log n overhead in a search procedure. To resolve the challenge, in this paper, we propose a new tree structure called the four-branch tree (FB-tree). Our key design is to build a tree node with four branches, which helps a search reach the destination nodes with fast jumps. Based on the index tree, we setup two systems for different requirements. The first system for efficiency-first settings achieves nearly optimal search complexity and adaptive security. The second, constructed via an oblivious RAM for security-first environments, still achieves worst-case sublinear search complexity. FB-tree performance is extensively evaluated with several real datasets. The Experimental data demonstrate that the FB-tree-based systems outperform the state-of-the-art solutions in terms of efficiency and scalability when Boolean queries are issued.

We construct the first decentralized multi-authority attribute-based encryption (MA-ABE) scheme for a non-trivial class of access policies whose security is based (in the random oracle model) solely on the Learning With Errors (LWE) assumption. The supported access policies are ones described by DNF formulas. All previous constructions of MA-ABE schemes supporting any non-trivial class of access policies were proven secure (in the random oracle model) assuming various assumptions on bilinear maps.

In our system, any party can become an authority and there is no requirement for any global coordination other than the creation of an initial set of common reference parameters. A party can simply act as a standard ABE authority by creating a public key and issuing private keys to different users that reflect their attributes. A user can encrypt data in terms of any DNF formulas over attributes issued from any chosen set of authorities. Finally, our system does not require any central authority. In terms of efficiency, when instantiating the scheme with a global bound $s$ on the size of access policies, the sizes of public keys, secret keys, and ciphertexts, all grow with $s$.

Technically, we develop new tools for building ciphertext-policy ABE (CP-ABE) schemes using LWE. Along the way, we construct the first provably secure CP-ABE scheme supporting access policies in $\mathsf{NC}^1$ that avoids the generic universal-circuit-based key-policy to ciphertext-policy transformation. In particular, our construction relies on linear secret sharing schemes with new properties and in some sense is more similar to CP-ABE schemes that rely on bilinear maps. While our CP-ABE construction is not more efficient than existing ones, it is conceptually intriguing and further we show how to extend it to get the MA-ABE scheme described above.

In this paper, we present new algorithms for the field arithmetic of supersingular isogeny Diffie-Hellman; one of the fifteen remaining candidates in the NIST post-quantum standardization process. Our approach uses a polynomial representation of the field elements together with mechanisms to keep the coefficients within bounds during the arithmetic operations. We present timings and comparisons for SIKEp503 and suggest a novel 736-bit prime that offers a $1.17\times$ speedup compared to SIKEp751 for a similar level of security.

In a recent seminal work, Bitansky and Shmueli (STOC '20) gave the first construction of a constant round zero-knowledge argument for NP secure against quantum attacks. However, their construction has several drawbacks compared to the classical counterparts. Specifically, their construction only achieves computational soundness, requires strong assumptions of quantum hardness of learning with errors (QLWE assumption) and the existence of quantum fully homomorphic encryption (QFHE), and relies on non-black-box simulation.

In this paper, we resolve these issues at the cost of weakening the notion of zero-knowledge to what is called $\epsilon$-zero-knowledge. Concretely, we construct the following protocols:

- We construct a constant round interactive proof for NP that satisfies statistical soundness and black-box $\epsilon$-zero-knowledge against quantum attacks assuming the existence of collapsing hash functions, which is a quantum counterpart of collision-resistant hash functions. Interestingly, this construction is just an adapted version of the classical protocol by Goldreich and Kahan (JoC '96) though the proof of $\epsilon$-zero-knowledge property against quantum adversaries requires novel ideas.

- We construct a constant round interactive argument for NP that satisfies computational soundness and black-box $\epsilon$-zero-knowledge against quantum attacks only assuming the existence of post-quantum one-way functions.

At the heart of our results is a new quantum rewinding technique that enables a simulator to extract a committed message of a malicious verifier while simulating verifier's internal state in an appropriate sense.

Dilithium is a lattice-based digital signature, one of the finalist candidates in the NIST's standardization process for post-quantum cryptography. In this paper, we propose a first side-channel attack on the process of signature generation of Dilithium. During the Dilithium signature generation process, we used NTT encryption single-trace for machine learning-based profiling attacks. In addition, it is possible to attack masked Dilithium using sparse multiplication. The proposed method is shown through experiments that all key values can be exposed 100% through a single-trace regardless of the optimization level.

A multi-identity pure fully homomorphic encryption (MIFHE) enables a server to perform arbitrary computation on the ciphertexts that are encrypted under different identities. In case of multi-attribute pure FHE (MAFHE), the ciphertexts are associated with different attributes. Clear and McGoldrick (CANS 2014) gave the first chosen-plaintext attack secure MIFHE and MAFHE based on indistinguishability obfuscation. In this study, we focus on building MIFHE and MAFHE which are se- cure under type 1 of chosen-ciphertext attack (CCA1) security model. In particular, using witness pseudorandom functions (Zhandry, TCC 2016) and multi-key pure FHE or MFHE (Mukherjee and Wichs, EUROCRYPT 2016) we propose the following constructions: – CCA secure identity-based encryption (IBE) that enjoys an optimal size ciphertexts, which we extend to a CCA1 secure MIFHE scheme. – CCA secure attribute-based encryption (ABE) having an optimal size ciphertexts, which we transform into a CCA1 secure MAFHE scheme.

By optimal size, we mean that the bit-length of a ciphertext is the bit-length of the message plus a security parameter multiplied with a constant. Known constructions of multi-identity(attribute) FHEs are either leveled, that is, support only bounded depth circuit evaluations or secure in a weaker CPA security model. With our new approach, we achieve both CCA1 security and evaluation on arbitrary depth circuits for multi-identity(attribute) FHE schemes.

Prior works in privacy-preserving biometric authentication mostly focus on the following setting. An organization collects users' biometric data during registration and later authorized access to the organization services after successful authentication. Each organization has to maintain its own biometric database. Similarly each user has to release her biometric information to multiple organizations; Independently, government authorities are making their extensive, nation-wide biometric database available to agencies and organizations, for countries that allow such access. This will enable organizations to provide authentication without maintaining biometric databases, while users only need to register once. However privacy remains a concern. We propose a privacy-preserving system, PBio, for this new setting. The core component of PBio is a new protocol comprising distance recoverable encryption and secure distance computation. We introduce an encrypt-then-split mechanism such that each of the organizations holds only an encrypted partial biometric database. This minimizes the risk of template reconstruction in the event that the encrypted partial database is recovered due to leak of the encryption key. PBio is also secure even when the organizations collude. A by-product benefit is that the use of encrypted partial templates allows quicker rejection for non-matching instances. We implemented a cloud-based prototype with desktop and Android applications. Our experiment results based on real remote users show that PBio is highly efficient. A round-trip authentication takes approximately 74ms (desktop) and 626ms (Android). The computation and communication overhead introduced by our new cryptographic protocol is only about 10ms (desktop) and 54ms (Android).

In this paper the author introduces methods that represent elements of a Finite Field $F_q$ as matrices that linearize certain operations like the product of elements in $F_q$. Since the Central Polynomial Map $\mathcal{F}(X)$ coming from the HFE scheme involves multiplication of elements in a Finite Field $F_q$, using a \textit{novel method} based in Linear Algebra the Quadratic Forms resulting from the polynomial map of the Public Key can be computed in few steps and these are bounded by the matrix $R$ that represents the linear action of the polynomial remainder modulo $f(t)$, which is the irreducible polynomial that identifies $F_q$. When the irreducible polynomial $f(t)$ is of the form $t^a+t^b+1$ \textit{modulo $2$}, the matrix $R$ is computed deterministically in few steps and all the Quadratic Forms are derived from this matrix. The research done tells that the central Polynomial Map $\mathcal{F}(X)$ is computed extremely fast, for example, in the CAS \textit{Mathematica}, taking an HFE Polynomial, Quadratic Forms are computed in $\textcolor{red}{\approx 1.4}$ seconds for the case $n=128$. This raises the more general lemma that Quadratic Forms obtained from BigField schemes are entirely dependent on the selected irreducible polynomial $f(t)$ as the matrix $R$ is conditioned by the structure of this polynomial.

Access Control or authorization is referred to as the confinement of specific actions of an entity to perform an action. Blockchain driven access control mechanisms have gained considerable attention since applications for blockchain were found beyond the premises of cryptocurrencies. However, there are no systematic efforts to analyze existing empirical evidence. To this end, we aim to synthesize literature to understand the state-of-the-art in blockchain driven access control mechanisms with respect to underlying platforms, utilized blockchain properties, nature of the models and associated testbeds & tools. We conducted the review in a systematic way. Meta Analysis and thematic synthesis was performed on the findings and results from the relevant primary studies in order to answer the research questions in perspective. We identified 76 relevant primary studies passing the quality assessment. A number of problems like single point of failure, security, privacy etc were targeted by the relevant primary studies. The meta analysis suggests the use of different blockchain platforms, several application domains and different utilized blockchain properties. In this paper, we present a state of the art review of blockchain driven access control systems. In hindsight, we present a taxonomy of blockchain driven access control systems to better under the immense implications this field has over various application domains.

A hash function family $\mathcal{H}$ is correlation-intractable for a $t$-input relation $\mathcal{R}$ if, given a random function $h$ chosen from $\mathcal{H}$, it is hard to find $x_1,\ldots,x_t$ such that $\mathcal{R}(x_1,\ldots,x_t,h(x_1),\ldots,h(x_t))$ is true. Recent works have constructed correlation-intractable hash families for single-input relations from standard cryptographic assumptions. However, the case of multi-input relations (even for $t=2$) is wide open: there are two known constructions, the first of which relies on a very strong ``brute-force-is-best'' type of hardness assumption (Holmgren and Lombardi, FOCS 2018); and the second only achieves the much weaker notion of output intractability (Zhandry, CRYPTO 2016).

Our main result is the construction of several multi-input correlation intractable hash families for large classes of interesting input-dependent relations from either the learning with errors (LWE) assumption or from indistinguishability obfuscation.

Our constructions follow from a simple and modular approach to constructing correlation-intractable hash functions using shift-hiding shiftable functions (Peikert-Shiehian, PKC 2018). This approach also gives an alternative framework (as compared to Peikert-Shiehian, CRYPTO 2019) for achieving single-input correlation intractability (and NIZKs for NP) based on LWE.

We show that lazily Barrett reducing when computing the inverse number theoretic transform (NTT) is optimal.

We give upper bounds for the solving degree and the last fall degree of the polynomial system associated to the HFE (Hidden Field Equations) cryptosystem. Our bounds improve the known bounds for this type of systems. We also present new results on the connection between the solving degree and the last fall degree and prove that, in some cases, the solving degree is independent of coordinate changes.

The security of multivariate cryptosystems and digital signature schemes relies on the hardness of solving a system of polynomial equations over a finite field. Polynomial system solving is also currently a bottleneck of index-calculus algorithms to solve the elliptic and hyperelliptic curve discrete logarithm problem. The complexity of solving a system of polynomial equations is closely related to the cost of computing Gr{\"o}bner bases, since computing the solutions of a polynomial system can be reduced to finding a lexicographic Gr{\"o}bner basis for the ideal generated by the equations. Several algorithms for computing such bases exist: We consider those based on repeated Gaussian elimination of Macaulay matrices. In this paper, we analyze the case of random systems, where random systems means either semi-regular systems, or quadratic systems in $n$ variables which contain a regular sequence of $n$ polynomials. We provide explicit formulae for bounds on the solving degree of semi-regular systems with $m>n$ equations in $n$ variables, for equations of arbitrary degrees for $m=n+1$, and for any $m$ for systems of quadratic or cubic polynomials. In the appendix, we provide a table of bounds for the solving degree of semi-regular systems of $m=n+k$ quadratic equations in $n$ variables for $2\leq k,n\leq 100$ and online we provide the values of the bounds for $2\leq k,n\leq 500$. For quadratic systems which contain a regular sequence of $n$ polynomials, we argue that the Eisenbud-Green-Harris conjecture, if true, provides a sharp bound for their solving degree, which we compute explicitly.

Memory encryption with an authentication tree has received significant attentions due to the increasing threats of active attacks and the widespread use of non-volatile memories. It is also gradually deployed to real-world systems, as shown by SGX available in Intel processors. The topic of memory encryption has been recently extensively studied, most actively from the viewpoint of system architecture. In this paper, we study the topic from the viewpoint of provable secure symmetric-key designs, with a primal focus on latency which is an important criterion for memory. A progress in such a direction can be observed in the memory encryption scheme inside SGX (SGX integrity tree or SIT). It uses dedicated, low-latency symmetric-key components, i.e., a message authentication code (MAC) and an authenticated encryption (AE) scheme based on AES-GCM. SIT has an excellent latency, however, it has a scalability issue for its on-chip memory size. By carefully examining the required behavior of MAC and AE schemes and their interactions in the tree operations, we develop a new memory encryption scheme called ELM. It consists of fully-parallelizable, low-latency MAC and AE schemes and utilizes an incremental property of the MAC. Our AE scheme is similar to OCB, however it improves OCB in terms of decryption latency. To showcase the effectiveness, we consider instantiations of ELM using the same cryptographic cores as SIT, and show that ELM has significantly lower latency than SIT for large memories. We also conducted preliminary hardware implementations to show that the total implementation size is comparable to SIT.

We are looking for a candidate with proven scientific expertise in the field of Security & Privacy. The following areas are of particular interest:

• Formal Methods and Security
• Privacy Technologies
• Systems Security
• Usable Security & Privacy

The successful candidate will cover one of these fields or any other field in security & privacy that complements the existing strengths in the department.

The professorship will be part of the Institute of Applied Information Processing and Communications, which is an internationally visible research environment with more than 60 researchers in information security. The institute collaborates closely with research groups and industry partners around the globe. It is a central part of the recently established Cybersecurity Campus Graz, which unites basic research, education, technology transfer, and industry partners in cybersecurity all under one roof.

The new professor will build an internationally visible group, and will be an engaged teacher in the Computer Science programs at the Bachelor’s, Master’s, and PhD level. At Graz University of Technology, undergraduate courses are taught in German or English and graduate courses are taught in English. For further question, please contact Stefan Mangard / stefan.mangard@iaik.tugraz.at

The application should be sent to the Dean of the Department of Computer Science and Biomedical Engineering at applications.csbme@tugraz.at until 26.11.2020 referencing to 7050/20/035

Closing date for applications:

Contact: Prof. Stefan Mangard - stefan.mangard@iaik.tugraz.at

More information: https://www.tugraz.at/fakultaeten/csbme/news/jobs-grants-calls/tenure-track-professor-in-security-and-privacy/

Event date: 5 March 2021
Submission deadline: 10 January 2021
Notification: 10 January 2021

Event date: 4 November to 6 November 2020

Within the Department of Computer Science at the University of Bristol, the Cryptography research group fosters an internationally leading and inter-disciplinary programme of research; current and previous work spans the full range theoretical and practical aspects relating to cryptography, applied cryptography, and cryptographic engineering.

This post represents an exciting opportunity to join the group as part of the SCARV [1] project, which in turn forms part of the NCSC-supported [2] Research Institute in Hardware Security & Embedded Systems (RISE). You will work at the intersection of computer architecture and cryptography, in collaboration with industrial (i.e., Cerberus Security Labs. and Thales) and academic partners, to deliver more efficient, more secure platforms based on RISC-V. Given the project goals, a strong background in micro-processor design and implementation, and/or implementation (e.g., side-channel) attacks on cryptography is therefore desirable.

[1] https://gow.epsrc.ac.uk/NGBOViewGrant.aspx?GrantRef=EP/R012288/1, http://github.com/scarv
[2] https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/information/research-institutes

Closing date for applications:

Contact: Dr. Daniel Page (csdsp@bristol.ac.uk): ref. job ID ACAD104784

More information: https://www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/details/?jobId=200210