International Association
for Cryptologic Research

RAM (random access memory) is an important primitive in verifiable computation. In this paper, we focus on realizing RAM with efficient batching property, i.e, proving a batch of $m$ updates on a RAM of size $N$ while incurring a cost that is sublinear in $N$. Classical approaches based on Merkle-trees or address ordered transcripts to model RAM correctness are either concretely inefficient, or incur linear overhead in the size of the RAM. Recent works explore cryptographic accumulators based on unknown-order groups (RSA, class-groups) to model the RAM state. While recent RSA accumulator based approaches offer significant improvement over classical methods, they incur linear overhead in the size of the accumulated set to compute witnesses, as well as prohibitive constant overheads.

We realize a batching-efficient RAM with superior asymptotic and concrete costs as compared to existing approaches. Towards this: (i) we build on recent constructions of lookup arguments to allow efficient lookups even in presence of table updates, and (ii) we realize a variant of sub-vector relation addressed in prior works, which we call committed index lookup. We combine the two building blocks to realize batching-efficient RAM with sublinear dependence on size of the RAM. Our construction incurs an amortized proving cost of $\tilde{O}(m\log m + \sqrt{mN})$ for a batch of $m$ updates on a RAM of size $N$. Our results also benefit the recent arguments for sub-vector relation, by enabling them to be efficient in presence of updates to the table. We believe that this is a contribution of independent interest.

We implement our solution to evaluate its concrete efficiency. Our experiments show that it offers significant improvement over existing works on batching-efficient accumulators/RAMs, with a substantially reduced resource barrier.

The significance of succinct zero-knowledge proofs has increased considerably in recent times. However, one of the major challenges that hinder the prover's efficiency is when dealing with Boolean circuits. In particular, the conversion of each bit into a finite field element incurs a blow-up of more than 100x in terms of both memory usage and computation time.

This work focuses on data-parallel Boolean circuits that contain numerous identical sub-circuits. These circuits are widely used in real-world applications, such as proving a large number of hash-preimages in zkEVM and zkBridge \cite{zkevm,xie2022zkbridge}. We develop a method for constructing succinct arguments with $2^{-\lambda}$ soundness error and $O(\omega(1)\frac{N}{\log{N}} \log{\log{N}})$ RAM operations, or $O(\frac{N}{\log{N}}\log\log N)$ finite field additions, along with a negligible number of finite field multiplications.

Our approach is based on using the GKR protocol \cite{GKR} to obtain the succinct argument.

In this paper we propose verifiable secret sharing (VSS) schemes secure for any honest majority in the synchronous model, and that only use symmetric-key cryptographic tools, therefore having plausibly post-quantum security. Compared to the state-of-the-art scheme with these features (Atapoor et al., Asiacrypt `23), our main improvement lies on the complexity of the ``optimistic'' scenario where the dealer and all but a small number of receivers behave honestly in the sharing phase: in this case, the running time and download complexity (amount of information read) of each honest verifier is polylogarithmic and the total amount of broadcast information by the dealer is logarithmic; all these complexities were linear in the aforementioned work by Atapoor et al. At the same time, we preserve these complexities with respect to the previous work for the ``pessimistic'' case where the dealer or $O(n)$ receivers cheat actively. The new VSS protocol is of interest in multiparty computations where each party runs one VSS as a dealer, such as distributed key generation protocols.

Our main technical handle is a distributed zero-knowledge proof of low degreeness of a polynomial, in the model of Boneh et al. (Crypto `19) where the statement (in this case the evaluations of the witness polynomial) is distributed among several verifiers, each knowing one evaluation. Using folding techniques similar to FRI (Ben-Sasson et al., ICALP `18) we construct such a proof where each verifier receives polylogarithmic information and runs in polylogarithmic time.

We revisit the question of the overhead to achieve full security (i.e., guaranteed output delivery) in secure multiparty computation (MPC). Recent works have closed the gap between full security and semi-honest security, by introducing protocols where the parties first compute the circuit using a semi-honest protocol and then run a verification step with sublinear communication in the circuit size. However, in these works the number of interaction rounds in the verification step is also sublinear in the circuit's size. Unlike communication, the round complexity of the semi-honest execution typically grows with the circuit's depth and not its size. Hence, for large but shallow circuits, this additional number of rounds incurs a significant overhead. Motivated by this gap, we make the following contributions:

1. We present a new MPC framework to obtain full security, compatible with effectively any ring, that has an additive communication overhead of only $O(\log |C|)$, where $|C|$ is the number of multiplication gates in the circuit, and a constant number of additional rounds beyond the underlying semi-honest protocol. Our framework works with any linear secret sharing scheme and relies on a new to utilize the machinery of zero-knowledge fully linear interactive oracle proofs (zk-FLIOP) in a black-box way. We present several instantiations to the building blocks of our compiler, from which we derive concretely efficient protocols in different settings.

2. We present extensions to the zk-FLIOP primitive for very general settings. The first one is for proving statements over potentially non-commutative rings, where the only requirement is that the ring has a large enough set where (1) every element in the set commutes with every element in the ring, and (2) the difference between any two distinct elements is invertible. Our second zk-FLIOP extension is for proving statements over Galois Rings. For these rings, we present concrete improvements on the current state-of-the-art for the case of constant-round proofs, by making use of Reverse Multiplication Friendly Embeddings (RMFEs).

The round complexity of interactive proof systems is a key question of practical and theoretical relevance in complexity theory and cryptography. Moreover, results such as QIP = QIP(3) (STOC'00) show that quantum resources significantly help in such a task.

In this work, we initiate the study of round compression of protocols in the bounded quantum storage model (BQSM). In this model, the malicious parties have a bounded quantum memory and they cannot store the all the qubits that are transmitted in the protocol.

Our main results in this setting are the following: 1. There is a non-interactive (statistical) witness indistinguishable proof for any language in NP (and even QMA) in BQSM in the plain model. We notice that in this protocol, only the memory of the verifier is bounded. 2. Any classical proof system can be compressed in a two-message quantum proof system in BQSM. Moreover, if the original proof system is zero-knowledge, the quantum protocol is zero-knowledge too. In this result, we assume that the prover has bounded memory.

Finally, we give evidence towards the "tightness" of our results. First, we show that NIZK in the plain model against BQS adversaries is unlikely with standard techniques. Second, we prove that without the BQS model there is no 2-message zero-knowledge quantum interactive proof, even under computational assumptions.

In a recent work, Hövelmanns, Hülsing and Majenz introduced a new security proof for the Fujisaki-Okamoto transform in the quantum-accessible random oracle model (QROM) used in post-quantum key encapsulation mechanisms. While having a smaller security loss due to decryption failures present in many constructions, it requires two new security properties of the underlying public-key encryption scheme (PKE). In this work, we show that one of the properties, Find Failing Plaintexts - Non Generic (FFP-NG) security, is achievable using a relatively efficient LWE-based PKE that does not have perfect correctness. In particular, we show that LWE reduces to breaking FFP-NG security of the PVW scheme, when all LWE errors are discrete Gaussian distributed. The reduction has an arbitrarily small constant multiplicative loss in LWE error size. For the proof, we make use of techniques by Genise, Micciancio, Peikert and Walter to analyze marginal and conditional distributions of sums of discrete Gaussians.

We revisit the construction of multiparty non-interactive key-exchange protocols with fine-grained security, which was recently studied in (Afshar et al., Eurocrypt 2023). Their work introduced a 4-party non-interactive key exchange with quadratic hardness, and proved it secure in Shoup's generic group model. This positive result was complemented with a proof that $n$-party non-interactive key exchange with superquadratic security cannot exist in Maurer's generic group model, for any $n\geq 3$. Because Shoup's model is stronger than Maurer's model, this leaves a gap between the positive and the negative result, and their work left as an open question the goal of closing this gap, and of obtaining fine-grained non-interactive key exchange without relying on idealized models.

In this work, we make significant progress on both questions. We obtain two main results:

A 4-party non-interactive key exchange protocol with quadratic security gap, assuming the existence of exponentially secure injective pseudorandom generators, and the subexponential hardness of the computational Diffie-Hellman assumption. In addition, our scheme is conceptually simpler, and can be generalized to other settings (with more parties or from other assumptions).

Assuming the existence of non-uniformly secure injective pseudorandom generators with exponential hardness, we further show that our protocol is secure in Maurer's model, albeit with a smaller hardness gap (up to $N^{1.6}$), making progress on filling the gap between the positive and the negative result of (Afshar et al., Eurocrypt 2023). Somewhat intriguingly, proving the security of our scheme in Maurer's idealized model turns out to be significantly harder than proving its security in the standard model.

Despite masking being a prevalent protection against passive side-channel attacks, implementing it securely in hardware remains a manual, challenging, and error-prone process.

This paper introduces INDIANA, a comprehensive security verification tool for hardware masking. It provides a hardware verification framework, enabling a complete analysis of simulation-based security in the glitch-extended probing model, with cycle-accurate estimations for leakage probabilities in the random probing model. Notably, INDIANA is the first framework to analyze arbitrary masked circuits in both models, even at the scale of full SPN cipher rounds (e.g., AES), while delivering exact verification results.

To attain precise and extensive verifiability, we introduce a partitionable probing distinguisher that enables rapid verification of probe tuples, outperforming state-of-the-art methods based on statistical independence. Most interestingly, our approach inherently facilitates extensions to the random probing model by leveraging Fast Fourier-Hadamard Transformations (FFTs).

Benchmark results show that INDIANA competes effectively with leading probing model verification tools, such as maskVerif and VERICA. Notably, INDIANA the first tool that is capable to provide cycle-accurate estimations of random probing leakage probabilities for large-scale masked circuits.

We provide a wide systematic study of proximity proofs with one-sided error for the Hamming weight problem $\mathsf{Ham}_{\alpha}$ (the language of bit vectors with Hamming weight at least $\alpha$), surpassing previously known results for this problem. We demonstrate the usefulness of the one-sided error property in applications: no malicious party can frame an honest prover as cheating by presenting verifier randomness that leads to a rejection.

We show proofs of proximity for $\mathsf{Ham}_{\alpha}$ with one-sided error and sublinear proof length in three models (MA, PCP, IOP), where stronger models allow for smaller query complexity. For $n$-bit input vectors, highlighting input query complexity, our MA has $O(\mathrm{log} n)$ query complexity, the PCP makes $O(\mathrm{loglog} n)$ queries, and the IOP makes a single input query. The prover in all of our applications runs in expected quasi-linear time. Additionally, we show that any perfectly complete IP of proximity for $\mathsf{Ham}_{\alpha}$ with input query complexity $n^{1-\epsilon}$ has proof length $\Omega(\mathrm{log} n)$.

Furthermore, we study PCPs of proximity where the verifier is restricted to making a single input query (SIQ). We show that any SIQ-PCP for $\mathsf{Ham}_{\alpha}$ must have a linear proof length, and complement this by presenting a SIQ-PCP with proof length $n+o(n)$.

As an application, we provide new methods that transform PCPs (and IOPs) for arbitrary languages with nonzero completeness error into PCPs (and IOPs) that exhibit perfect completeness. These transformations achieve parameters previously unattained.

Cryptography often considers the strongest yet plausible attacks in the real world. Preprocessing (a.k.a. non-uniform attack) plays an important role in both theory and practice: an efficient online attacker can take advantage of advice prepared by a time-consuming preprocessing stage.

Salting is a heuristic strategy to counter preprocessing attacks by feeding a small amount of randomness to the cryptographic primitive. We present general and tight characterizations of preprocessing against cryptographic salting, with upper bounds matching the advantages of the most intuitive attack. Our result quantitatively strengthens the previous work by Coretti, Dodis, Guo, and Steinberger (EUROCRYPT'18). Our proof exploits a novel connection between the non-uniform security of salted games and direct product theorems for memoryless algorithms.

For quantum adversaries, we give similar characterizations for property finding games, resolving an open problem of the quantum non-uniform security of salted collision resistant hash by Chung, Guo, Liu, and Qian (FOCS'20). Our proof extends the compressed oracle framework of Zhandry (CRYPTO'19) to prove quantum strong direct product theorems for property finding games in the average-case hardness.

The seminal work by Impagliazzo and Rudich (STOC'89) demonstrated the impossibility of constructing classical public key encryption (PKE) from one-way functions (OWF) in a black-box manner. However, the question remains: can quantum PKE (QPKE) be constructed from quantumly secure OWF?

A recent line of work has shown that it is indeed possible to build QPKE from OWF, but with one caveat --- they rely on quantum public keys, which cannot be authenticated and reused. In this work, we re-examine the possibility of perfect complete QPKE in the quantum random oracle model (QROM), where OWF exists.

Our first main result: QPKE with classical public keys, secret keys and ciphertext, does not exist in the QROM, if the key generation only makes classical queries. Therefore, a necessary condition for constructing such QPKE from OWF is to have the key generation classically ``un-simulatable’’. Previous discussions (Austrin~et al. CRYPTO'22) on the impossibility of QPKE from OWF rely on a seemingly strong conjecture. Our work makes a significant step towards a complete and unconditional quantization of Impagliazzo and Rudich’s results.

Our second main result extends to QPKE with quantum public keys. The second main result: QPKE with quantum public keys, classical secret keys and ciphertext, does not exist in the QROM, if the key generation only makes classical queries and the quantum public key is either pure or ``efficiently clonable''. The result is tight due to all existing QPKEs constructions. Our result further gives evidence on why existing QPKEs lose reusability.

To achieve these results, we use a novel argument based on conditional mutual information and quantum Markov chain by Fawzi and Renner (Communications in Mathematical Physics). We believe the techniques used in the work will find other usefulness in separations in quantum cryptography/complexity.

Doubly Efficient Private Information Retrieval (DEPIR) pertains to a Private Information Retrieval (PIR) scheme with both near-linear server-side preprocessing time and sublinear query time. Very recently, Lin et al. (STOC '23) devised the first single-server DEPIR scheme from standard assumptions. However, their work left one major question open: can we build a DEPIR scheme in the multi-server setting, without relying on heavy cryptographic machinery? In this work, we propose the first doubly efficient information-theoretic PIR scheme, in the multi-server setting. For a database of size $N$, our scheme allows servers to answer an infinite number of client queries in $N^{o(1)}$ time, after a single preprocessing phase which takes $N^{1+o(1)}$ time. Our result is only a $N^{o(1)}$ factor from the lower bound proven by Persiano and Yeo (SODA '22) for this setting. In addition, we devise a second information-theoretic PIR scheme which pushes the state of the art for the setting where the number of servers is more constrained. It achieves equally fast query times as our first scheme above, and a preprocessing time of $N^{2+o(1)}$.

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is one of the most popular serialization languages. Since many security protocols are built using XML, it also provides cryptographic functionality. A central framework in this area is the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML). This standard is one of the most widely used options for implementing Single Sign-On (SSO), which allows users to authenticate to different service providers using the credentials from a single identity provider. Like all other security protocols currently in use, the security and privacy of XML-based frameworks such as SAML is threatened by the development of increasingly powerful quantum computers. In fact, future attackers with access to scalable quantum computers will be able to break the currently used cryptographic building blocks and thus undermine the security of the SAML SSO to illegally access sensitive private information. Post-quantum cryptography algorithms have been developed to protect against such quantum attackers. While many security protocols have been migrated into the quantum age by using post-quantum cryptography, no such solutions for XML and the security protocols based on it have been developed, let alone tested. We make the following contributions to fill this gap. We have designed post-quantum solutions for the cryptographic building blocks in XML and integrated them into the SAML SSO protocol. We implemented our solutions in the OpenSAML, Apache Santuario, and BouncyCastle libraries and extensively tested their performance for various post-quantum instantiations. As a result, we have created a comprehensive and solid foundation for post-quantum XML and post-quantum SAML SSO migration.

We introduce and formally define Multivariate Multi-Polynomial (MMP) commitment, a commitment scheme on multiple multivariate polynomials, and illustrate the concept with an efficient construction, which enjoys constant commitment size and logarithmic proof size. We further enhance our MMP scheme to achieve the zero-knowledge property.

Additionally, combined with a novel zero-knowledge range proof for Pedersen subvector commitment, we present a Zero-Knowledge Range Proof (ZKRP) for MMP commitment.

We present two sample applications. Firstly, our MMP commitment can be used for efficient aggregation of SNARK based on multivariate polynomial commitments. As a showcase, we apply MMP commitment to HyperPlonk and refer to this variant of HyperPlonk as aHyperPlonk. For $k$ instances, each with circuit size $n$, the communication and verification complexity is reduced from $O(k \cdot \log n)$ to $O(\log k + \log n)$, while the prover complexity remains the same. Secondly, we propose a novel zero-knowledge proof for vehicle GPS traces based on ZKRP for MMP, which allows vehicle owners to prove if a vehicle has/hasn't passed through some location during a specific time interval.

Payment channel networks (e.g., the Lightning Network in Bitcoin) constitute one of the most popular scalability solutions for blockchains. Their safety relies on parties being online to detect fraud attempts on-chain and being able to timely react by publishing certain transactions on-chain. However, a cheating party may bribe miners in order to censor those transactions, resulting in loss of funds for the cheated party: these attacks are known in the literature as timelock-bribing attacks. In this work, we present the first channel construction that does not require parties to be online and, at the same time, is resistant to time-lock bribing attacks.

We start by proving for the first time that Lightning channels are secure against timelock bribing attacks in the presence of rational channel parties under the assumption that these parties constantly monitor the mempool and never deplete the channel in one direction. The latter underscores the importance of keeping a coin reserve in each channel as implemented in the Lightning Network, albeit for different reasons. We show, however, that the security of the Lightning Network against Byzantine channel parties does not carry over to a setting in which miners are rational and accept timelock bribes.

Next, we introduce CRAB, the first Lightning-compatible channel construction that provides security against Byzantine channel parties and rational miners. CRAB leverages miners' incentives to safeguard the channel, thereby also forgoing the unrealistic assumption of channel parties constantly monitoring the mempool.

Finally, we show how our construction can be refined to eliminate the major assumption behind payment channels, i.e., the need for online participation. To that end, we present Sleepy CRAB the first provably secure channel construction under rational miners that enables participants to go offline indefinitely. We also provide a proof-of-concept implementation of Sleepy CRAB and evaluate its cost in Bitcoin, thereby demonstrating its practicality.

The Keyed Hashing and Asymmetric Nonce (KHAN) encryption algorithm is a novel cryptographic scheme that utilizes the unique properties of full reptend prime numbers. This paper details the algorithm, its theoretical foundations, and the rigorous proofs of its security properties. By leveraging the characteristics of cyclic sequences derived from full reptend primes, KHAN provides robust encryption with high resistance to cryptanalytic attacks.

Event date: 21 August to 23 August 2024
Submission deadline: 15 June 2024
Notification: 20 July 2024

Part-Time / Remote

DigicomAI is focused on building next-generation digital communications and information security technology. Our advanced AI capabilities are designed to automate network management decision-making, harden networks, and enable cross-cloud control without the need for human intervention. By leveraging our technology, organizations can improve network performance, increase operating efficiency, and reduce resource expenditures.

Role Description

We are seeking a part-time consultant (remote) to provide Cryptography & Cybersecurity services in support of technology research, design, implementation and general corporate governance. You will be responsible for providing expertise and guidance on cryptography and cybersecurity principles, trends and best practices. Your project-based tasks will involve conducting information security assessments, ensuring application security, researching and advising product developers on cryptography techniques and engineering recommendations. You will also help keep the company up-to-date with the latest industry trends and technologies.

Qualifications

- Cybersecurity and Information Assurance skills
- Experience in Applied Cryptography Engineering
- Vulnerability Assessment knowledge
- Expertise in Application Security and Network Security
- Understanding of risk assessment and risk management
- International industry experience (Europe, Middle East or Australia preferred)
- Strong problem-solving and analytical skills
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills
- Ability to work independently and remotely
- Relevant Information Security and Cryptographic certifications (CISSP, etc)
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, or a related field

Additional

This is an ideal position for an experienced cybersecurity and cryptography engineer who wants to contribute their expertise to cutting-edge technology development projects. We offer a fully-remote, asynchronous schedule tailored to the specific needs of the Consultant.

Closing date for applications:

Contact: Ted Runkle (Venture Advisor)

The Center for Security and Privacy at the School of Computer Science of the University of Birmingham has an open PhD position in post-quantum cryptography. The supervision will be shared by Rishiraj Bhattacharyya and Christophe Petit. We invite applications from candidates with interests in Cryptography and Computer Algebra. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in Mathematics, Computer Science, Physics or a related area.

The primary research theme for the call is in the foundations and cryptanalysis of post-quantum cryptosystems. The exact projects could be tailored to match the candidate's background and interests.

The review of applications will start immediately and the call remains open until September 2024. For more information, please reach out to Rishiraj (r.bhattacharyya@bham.ac.uk) and Christophe (c.petit.1@bham.ac.uk).

Closing date for applications:

Contact: Rishiraj Bhattacharyya (r.bhattacharyya@bham.ac.uk) and Christophe Petit (c.petit.1@bham.ac.uk)

The Learning with Errors (LWE) problem with its variants over structured lattices has been widely exploited in efficient post-quantum cryptosystems. Recently, May suggests the Meet-LWE attack, which poses a significant advancement in the line of work on the Meet-in-the-Middle approach to analyze LWE with ternary secrets.

In this work, we generalize and extend the idea of Meet-LWE by introducing ternary trees, which result in diverse representations of the secrets. More precisely, we split the secrets into three pieces with the same dimension and expand them into a ternary tree to leverage the increased representations to improve the overall attack complexity. We carefully analyze and optimize the time and memory costs of our attack algorithm exploiting ternary trees, and compare them to those of the Meet-LWE attack. With asymptotic and non-asymptotic comparisons, we observe that our attack provides improved estimations for all parameter settings, including those of the practical post-quantum schemes, compared to the Meet-LWE attack. We also evaluate the security of the Round 2 candidates of the KpqC competition which aims to standardize post-quantum public key cryptosystems in the Republic of Korea, and report that the estimated complexities for our attack applied to SMAUG-T are lower than the claimed for some of the recommended parameters.