International Association
for Cryptologic Research

As more privacy-preserving solutions leverage trusted execution environments (TEEs) like Intel SGX, it becomes pertinent that these solutions can by design thwart TEE side-channel attacks that research has brought to light. In particular, such solutions need to be fully oblivious to circumvent leaking private information through memory or timing side channels.

In this work, we present fast fully oblivious algorithms for shuffling and sorting data. Oblivious shuffling and sorting are two fundamental primitives that are frequently used for permuting data in privacy-preserving solutions. We present novel oblivious shuffling and sorting algorithms in the offline/online model such that the bulk of the computation can be done in an offline phase that is independent of the data to be permuted. The resulting online phase provides performance improvements over state-of-the-art oblivious shuffling and sorting algorithms both asymptotically ($O(\beta n\log n)$ vs. $O(\beta n \log^2n)$) and concretely ($>5\times$ and $>3\times$ speedups), when permuting $n$ items each of size $\beta$.

Our work revisits Waksman networks, and it uses the key observation that setting the control bits of a Waksman network for a uniformly random shuffle is independent of the data to be shuffled. However, setting the control bits of a Waksman network efficiently and fully obliviously poses a challenge, and we provide a novel algorithm to this end. The total costs (inclusive of offline computation) of our WaksShuffle shuffling algorithm and our WaksSort sorting algorithm are lower than all other fully oblivious shuffling and sorting algorithms when the items are at least moderately sized (i.e., $\beta$ > 1400 B), and the performance gap only widens as the item sizes increase. Furthermore, WaksShuffle improves the online cost of oblivious shuffling by $>5\times$ for shuffling $2^{20}$ items of any size; similarly WaksShuffle+QS, our other sorting algorithm, provides $>2.7\times$ speedups in the online cost of oblivious sorting.

In this paper, we propose LOL, a general framework for designing blockwise stream ciphers, to achieve ultrafast software implementations for the ubiquitous virtual networks in 5G/6G environments and high-security level for post-quantum cryptography. The LOL framework is structurally strong, and all its components as well as the LOL framework itself enjoy high flexibility with various extensions. Following the LOL framework, we propose new stream cipher designs named LOL-MINI and LOL-DOUBLE with the support of the AES-NI and SIMD instructions: the former applies the basic LOL single mode while the latter uses the extended parallel-dual mode. Both LOL-MINI and LOL-DOUBLE support 256-bit key length and, according to our thorough evaluations, have 256-bit security margins against all existing cryptanalysis methods including differential, linear, integral, etc. The software performances of LOL-MINI and LOL-DOUBLE can reach 89 Gbps and 135 Gbps. In addition to pure encryptions, the LOL-MINI and LOL-DOUBLE stream ciphers can also be applied in a stream-cipher-then-MAC strategy to make an AEAD scheme.

Multi-Party Computation (MPC) has become a major tool for protecting hundreds of billions of dollars in cryptocurrency wallets. MPC protocols are currently powering the wallets of Coinbase, Binance, Zengo, BitGo, Fireblocks and many other fintech companies servicing thousands of financial institutions and hundreds of millions of end-user consumers.

We present four novel key-extraction attacks on popular MPC signing protocols showing how a single corrupted party may extract the secret in full during the MPC signing process. Our attacks are highly practical (the practicality of the attack depends on the number of signature-generation ceremonies the attacker participates in before extracting the key). Namely, we show key-extraction attacks against different threshold-ECDSA protocols/implementations requiring $10^6$, $256$, $16$, and *one signature*, respectively. In addition, we provide proof-of-concept code that implements our attacks.

In a recent paper, Khairallah demonstrated a birthday-bound attack on TNT, thereby invalidating its (beyond-the-birthday-bound) CCA security claims. In this short note, we reestablish a birthday-bound CCA security bound for TNT. Furthermore, using a minor variant of Khairallah's attack, we show that our security bound is tight. We provide a rigorous and complete attack advantage calculations to further enhance the confidence in Khairallah's proposed attack strategy.

Digital Covid certificates are the first widely deployed end-user cryptographic certificates. For service providers, such as airlines or event ticket vendors, that needed to check that their (global) customers satisfy certain health policies, the verification of such Covid certificates was challenging though - not because of the cryptography involved, but due to the multitude of issuers, different certificate types and the evolving nature of country-specific policies that had to be supported. As Covid certificates contain sensitive health information, their (online) presentation to non-health related entities also poses clear privacy risk. To address both challenges, the EU proposed a specification for outsourcing the verification process to a validator service, that executes the process and informs service providers of the result. The WHO announced to adopt this approach for general vaccination credentials beyond Covid-19. While being beneficial to improve security and privacy for service providers, their solution requires strong trust assumption for the (central) validation service that learns all health-related details of the users.

In our work, we propose and formally model a privacy-preserving variant of such an outsourced validation service. Therein the validator learns the attributes it is supposed to verify, but not the users identity. Still, the validator's assertion is blindly bound to the user's identity to ensure the desired user-binding. We analyze the EU specification in our model and show that it only meets a subset of those goals. Our analysis further shows that the EU protocol is unnecessarily complex and can be significantly simplified while maintaining the same (weak) level of security. Finally, we propose a new construction for privacy-preserving certificate validation that provably satisfies all desired goals.

The Polynomial Modular Number System (PMNS) is a non-positional number system for modular arithmetic. A PMNS is defined by a tuple $(p, n, \gamma, \rho, E)$, where $p$, $n$, $\gamma$ and $\rho$ are positive non-zero integers and $E\in\mathbb{Z}_{n}[X]$ is a monic polynomial such that $E(\gamma) \equiv 0 \pmod p$. The PMNS is a redundant number system. In~\cite{rando-pmns-arith26}, Didier et al. used this redundancy property to randomise the data during the Elliptic Curve Scalar Multiplication (ECSM). In this paper, we refine the results on redundancy and propose several new results on PMNS. More precisely, we study a generalisation of the Montgomery-like internal reduction method proposed by Negre and Plantard, along with some improvements on parameter bounds for smaller memory cost to represent elements in this system. We also show how to perform equality test in the PMNS.

In this work, we construct the first digital signature (SIG) and public-key encryption (PKE) schemes with almost tight multi-user security under adaptive corruptions based on the learning-with-errors (LWE) assumption in the standard model. Our PKE scheme achieves almost tight IND-CCA security and our SIG scheme achieves almost tight strong EUF-CMA security, both in the multi-user setting with adaptive corruptions. The security loss is quadratic in the security parameter, and independent of the number of users, signatures or ciphertexts. Previously, such schemes were only known to exist under number-theoretic assumptions or in classical random oracle model, thus vulnerable to quantum adversaries.

To obtain our schemes from LWE, we propose new frameworks for constructing SIG and PKE with a core technical tool named probabilistic quasi-adaptive hash proof system (pr-QA-HPS). As a new variant of HPS, our pr-QA-HPS provides probabilistic public and private evaluation modes that may toss coins. This is in stark contrast to the traditional HPS [Cramer and Shoup, Eurocrypt 2002] and existing variants like approximate HPS [Katz and Vaikuntanathan, Asiacrypt 2009], whose public and private evaluations are deterministic in their inputs. Moreover, we formalize a new property called evaluation indistinguishability by requiring statistical indistinguishability of the two probabilistic evaluation modes, even in the presence of the secret key. The evaluation indistinguishability, as well as other nice properties resulting from the probabilistic features of pr-QA-HPS, are crucial for the multi-user security proof of our frameworks under adaptive corruptions.

As for instantiations, we construct pr-QA-HPS from the LWE assumption and prove its properties with almost tight reductions, which admit almost tightly secure LWE-based SIG and PKE schemes under our frameworks. Along the way, we also provide new almost-tight reductions from LWE to multi-secret LWE, which may be of independent interest.

We fix an omission in [Petit17] on torsion point attacks of isogeny-based cryptosystems akin to SIDH, also reprised in [dQuehen-etal21]. In these works, their authors represent certain integers using a norm equation to derive a secret isogeny. However, this derivation uses as a crucial ingredient ([Petit17] Section 4.3), which we show to be incorrect. We then state sufficient conditions allowing to prove a modified version this lemma.

A further idea of parametrizing solutions of the norm equation will show that these conditions can be fulfilled under the same heuristics of these previous works. Our contribution is a theoretical one. It doesn't invalidate the attack, which works as well in practice, but gives a correct mathematical justification for it.

We also simplify the argument of Theorem 3 in [dQuehen-etal21] to show that the requirement that $m$ be small is unnecessary.

Both threshold and blind signatures have, individually, received a considerable amount of attention. However little is known about their combination, i.e., a threshold signature which is also blind, in that no coalition of signers learns anything about the message being signed or the signature being produced. Several applications of blind signatures (e.g., anonymous tokens) would benefit from distributed signing as a means to increase trust in the service and hence reduce the risks of key compromise. This paper builds the first blind threshold signatures in pairing-free groups. Our main contribution is a construction that transforms an underlying blind non-threshold signature scheme with a suitable structure into a threshold scheme, preserving its blindness. The resulting signing protocol proceeds in three rounds, and produces signatures consisting of one group element and two scalars. The underlying non-threshold blind signature schemes are of independent interest, and improve upon the current state of the art (Tessaro and Zhu, EUROCRYPT ’22) with shorter signatures (three elements, instead of four) and simpler proofs of security. All of our schemes are proved secure in the Random Oracle and Algebraic Group Models, assuming the hardness of the discrete logarithm problem.

The most crucial but time-consuming task for differential cryptanalysis is to find a differential with a high probability. To tackle this task, we propose a new SAT-based automatic search framework to efficiently figure out a differential with the highest probability under a specified condition. As the previous SAT methods (e.g., the Sun et al’s method proposed at ToSC 2021(1)) focused on accelerating the search for an optimal single differential characteristic, these are not optimized for evaluating a clustering effect to obtain a tighter differential probability of differentials. In contrast, our framework takes advantage of a method to solve incremental SAT problems in parallel using a multi-threading technique, and consequently, it offers the following advantages compared with the previous methods: (1) speedy identification of a differential with the highest probability under the specified conditions; (2) efficient construction of the truncated differential with the highest probability from the obtained multiple differentials; and (3) applicability to a wide class of symmetric-key primitives. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our framework, we apply it to the block cipher PRINCE and the tweakable block cipher QARMA. We successfully figure out the tight differential bounds for all variants of PRINCE and QARMA within the practical time, thereby identifying the longest distinguisher for all the variants, which improves existing ones by one to four more rounds. Besides, we uncover notable differences between PRINCE and QARMA in the behavior of differential, especially for the clustering effect. We believe that our findings shed light on new structural properties of these important primitives. In the context of key recovery attacks, our framework allows us to derive the key-recovery-friendly truncated differentials for all variants of QARMA. Consequently, we report key recovery attacks based on (truncated) differential cryptanalysis on QARMA for the first time and show these key recovery attacks are competitive with existing other attacks.

The privacy concern in smart contract applications continues to grow, leading to the proposal of various schemes aimed at developing comprehensive and universally applicable privacy-preserving smart contract (PPSC) schemes. However, the existing research in this area is fragmented and lacks a comprehensive system overview. This paper aims to bridge the existing research gap on PPSC schemes by systematizing previous studies in this field. The primary focus is on two categories: PPSC schemes based on cryptographic tools like zero-knowledge proofs, as well as schemes based on trusted execution environments. In doing so, we aim to provide a condensed summary of the different approaches taken in constructing PPSC schemes. Additionally, we also offer a comparative analysis of these approaches, highlighting the similarities and differences between them. Furthermore, we shed light on the challenges that developers face when designing and implementing PPSC schemes. Finally, we delve into potential future directions for improving and advancing these schemes, discussing possible avenues for further research and development.

Correlated secret randomness is a useful resource for secure computation protocols, often enabling dramatic speedups compared to protocols in the plain model. This has motivated a line of work on identifying and securely generating useful correlations.

Different kinds of correlations can vary greatly in terms of usefulness and ease of generation. While there has been major progress on efficiently generating oblivious transfer (OT) correlations, other useful kinds of correlations are much more costly to generate. Thus, it is highly desirable to develop efficient techniques for securely converting copies of a given source correlation into copies of a given target correlation, especially when the former are cheaper to generate than the latter.

In this work, we initiate a systematic study of such conversions that only involve a single uni-directional message. We refer to such a conversion as a one-message secure reduction (OMSR). Recent works (Agarwal et al, Eurocrypt 2022; Khorasgani et al, Eurocrypt 2022) studied a similar problem when no communication is allowed; this setting is quite restrictive, however, with few non-trivial conversions being feasible. The OMSR setting substantially expands the scope of feasible results, allowing for direct applications to existing MPC protocols.

We obtain the following positive and negative results. - OMSR constructions. We present a general rejection-sampling based technique for OMSR with OT source correlations. We apply it to substantially improve in the communication complexity of optimized protocols for distributed symmetric cryptography (Dinur et al., Crypto 2021).

- OMSR lower bounds. We develop general techniques for proving lower bounds on the communication complexity of OMSR, matching our positive results up to small constant factors.

In this paper, we study the decoding failure rate (DFR) of non-binary QC-MDPC codes using theoretical tools, extending the results of previous binary QC-MDPC code studies. The theoretical estimates of the DFR are particularly significant for cryptographic applications of QC-MDPC codes. Specifically, in the binary case, it is established that exploiting decoding failures makes it possible to recover the secret key of a QC-MDPC cryptosystem. This implies that to attain the desired security level against adversaries in the CCA2 model, the decoding failure rate must be strictly upper-bounded to be negligibly small. In this paper, we observe that this attack can also be extended to the non--binary case as well, which underscores the importance of DFR estimation. Consequently, we study the guaranteed error-correction capability of non-binary QC-MDPC codes under one-step majority logic (OSML) decoder and provide a theoretical analysis of the 1-iteration parallel symbol flipping decoder and its combination with OSML decoder. Utilizing these results, we estimate the potential public-key sizes for QC-MDPC cryptosystems over $\mathbb{F}_4$ for various security levels. We find that there is no advantage in reducing key sizes when compared to the binary case.

In recent years, the research community has made great progress in improving techniques for privacy-preserving computation such as fully homomorphic encryption (FHE). Despite the progress, there remain open challenges, mostly in the areas of performance and usability, to further advance the adoption of these technologies. This work provides multiple contributions to improve the current state-of-the-art in both areas.

More specifically, we significantly simplify the bootstrapping idea by Carpov, Izabach`ene, and Mollimard [1] for Boolean-based FHE schemes such as FHEW or TFHE, making the concept usable in practice. Based on our simplifications, we provide an easy-to-use interface for amortized bootstrapping implementing our improvements in the open-source library FHE-Deck and provide new parameter sets for multi-bit encryptions with state-of-the-art security.

We build a toolset that compiles high-level code such as C++ to code that executes operations on encrypted data. For this toolset, we propose the first non-trivial FHE-specific optimizations in synthesizing privacy-preserving circuits from high-level code, namely look-up table (LUT) grouping and adder substitution. Using LUT grouping, we reduce the number of bootstrapping required by almost 35 % on average, while for adder substitution, we reduce the number of required bootstrapping by up to 80 % for certain use cases. Overall, the execution time is up to 3.8× faster using our optimizations compared to previous state-of-the-art circuit synthesis.

On-chain mixers, such as Tornado Cash (TC), have become a popular privacy solution for many non-privacy-preserving blockchain users. These mixers enable users to deposit a fixed amount of coins and withdraw them to another address, while effectively reducing the linkability between these addresses and securely obscuring their transaction history. However, the high cost of interacting with existing on-chain mixer smart contracts prohibits standard users from using the mixer, mainly due to the use of computationally expensive cryptographic primitives. For instance, the deposit cost of TC on Ethereum is approximately $1.1m$ gas (i.e., $66$ USD in June 2023), which is $53\times$ higher than issuing a base transfer transaction.

In this work, we introduce the Merkle Pyramid Builder approach, to incrementally build the Merkle tree in an on-chain mixer and update the tree per batch of deposits, which can therefore decrease the overall cost of using the mixer. Our evaluation results highlight the effectiveness of this approach, showcasing a significant reduction of up to $7\times$ in the amortized cost of depositing compared to state-of-the-art on-chain mixers. Importantly, these improvements are achieved without compromising users' privacy. Furthermore, we propose the utilization of verifiable computations to shift the responsibility of Merkle tree updates from on-chain smart contracts to off-chain clients, which can further reduce deposit costs. Additionally, our analysis demonstrates that our designs ensure fairness by distributing Merkle tree update costs among clients over time.

Quantum key distribution (QKD) constitutes the most widespread family of information preservation techniques in the context of Quantum Cryptography. However, these techniques must deal with a series of technological challenges that prevent their efficient implementation, in space, as well as in exclusively terrestrial configurations. Moreover, the current smallsat constellations of Low Earth Orbit (LEO with an altitude of approx. 500 km) added to other satellites in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), and geostationary orbits (GEO), plus a large amount of space debris present around the planet, have become a serious obstacle for Astronomy. In this work, a classic alternative to QKD is presented, also based on a symmetric key, but with low cost, and high efficiency, which dispenses with all the implementation problems present in the QKD protocols and does not require the use of satellites, and which we will call non-distributable key sharing (NDKS). Due to its low cost, simplicity of implementation, and high efficiency, NDKS is presented as an ideal solution to the problem of cybersecurity on the Internet of Things (IoT), in general, and IoT-fog-clouds, in particular.

The 2023 election is being held to fill the three IACR Director positions currently held by Masayuki Abe, Tancrède Lepoint and Moti Yung, whose 3-year terms are ending.

Nominations are due by October 1st, 2023.
Information about nomination is available at https://iacr.org/elections/2023/announcement.html.

The position is funded by the Norwegian Research Council in the projects: “Lightweight Cryptography for Future Smart Networks” and “OffPAD - Optimizing balance between high security and usability. An innovative approach to endpoint security”.

The NIST Post Quantum Cryptography Standardization is expected to end in 2024, and post-quantum cryptography will be required to secure all sensitive information in the years to come shortly after, e.g., in protocols such as TLS, SSH, FIDO and other systems. Additionally, NIST have announces a new call for quantum secure digital signature algorithms.

This project aims to conduct research on lightweight post-quantum protocols and primitives, including symmetric key primitives, and improve upon the frameworks used today regarding communication size, computation complexity and secure and efficient implementation of long-term security cryptographic primitives.

The postdoc will be part of the NTNU Applied Cryptology Lab, a multidisciplinary research group consisting of members from the Department of Information Security and Communication Technology and the Department of Mathematical Sciences at NTNU.

A list of possible, but not limited to, post-quantum cryptography research topics for the postdoctoral position are:

Usability of lightweight primitives and protocols

Low communication key exchange and encryption

Lightweight ZKP and digital signatures

Efficient implementations in HW and SW

Side-channel security analysis

Your hosts will be Professor Danilo Gligoroski, Professor Stig Frode Mjølsnes, and/or Associate Professor Tjerand Silde.

Closing date for applications:

Contact: Associate Professor Tjerand Silde (tjerand.silde@ntnu.no)

More information: https://www.jobbnorge.no/en/available-jobs/job/248833/postdoctoral-fellow-in-lightweight-post-quantum-cryptography

We are hiring a PhD student to work on a project investigating privacy preserving yet auditable cryptographic protocols for decentralized applications. The student will be working in one (or more) of the following areas: secure multiparty computation, zero knowledge, anonymous credentials, blockchain consensus, cryptocurrencies, differential privacy.

The ideal candidate should have a background in computer science or mathematics, with a focus on complexity theory, number theory, algebra and probability theory. Previous research experience in security and cryptography (specially in cryptographic protocols) is most welcome. Moreover, the candidate should be motivated and enthusiastic about theoretical research in cryptography.

ITU is located in beautiful Copenhagen, which is well connected by flight to many locations. We offer a competitive salary following Danish standards as well as travel funding for scientific visits and events. As a resident in Denmark, the student will also have access to the excellent public education and health systems.

Candidates are welcome to contact Bernardo David by email for any questions. Notice, however, that all applications must be submitted via the official URL.

Closing date for applications:

Contact: Bernardo David (beda@itu.dk)

More information: https://candidate.hr-manager.net/ApplicationInit.aspx?cid=119&ProjectId=181605&DepartmentId=3439&MediaId=5

IDEAS NCBR Sp. z o.o. is a scientific and research centre operating in the field of artificial intelligence and digital economy, whose mission is to support the development of these technologies in Poland by creating a platform connecting the academic and business environment. IDEAS NCBR Sp. z o.o. was founded by the National Centre for Research and Development (NCBR) and is a part of NCBR Group. Our goal is to build in Poland the largest, friendly to conduct innovative research platform, to educate a new generation of scientists focused on the practical application of the developed algorithms and their subsequent commercialization in the industry, finance, medicine and other branches of the economy. IDEAS NCBR is now seeking to appoint a Group Leader in Cybersecurity with Emphasis on Post-quantum Cryptography who will build and lead the most recognizable research group (circa 20 people) in this area. Candidates with Post-quantum Cryptography expertise are strongly encouraged to apply. Reporting to the President, the Group Leader will develop and lead an exciting programme of research and innovation projects aligned with the vision and mission of IDEAS NCBR. The Group Leader will also act as an ambassador for IDEAS NCBR, representing the centre nationally and internationally, forging links with universities and industry, and identifying relevant opportunities for commercialisation.

Closing date for applications:

Contact: Marta Krzyżycka

More information: https://ideas-ncbr.softgarden.io/job/34064687?l=pl