Still Wrong Use of Pairings in Cryptography

Several pairing-based cryptographic protocols are recently proposed with a wide variety of new novel applications including the ones in emerging technologies like cloud computing, internet of things (IoT), e-health systems and wearable technologies. There have been however a wide range of incorrect use of these primitives. The paper of Galbraith, Paterson, and Smart (2006) pointed out most of the issues related to the incorrect use of pairing-based cryptography. However, we noticed that some recently proposed applications still do not use these primitives correctly. This leads to unrealizable, insecure or too inefficient designs of pairing-based protocols. We observed that one reason is not being aware of the recent advancements on solving the discrete logarithm problems in some groups. The main purpose of this article is to give an understandable, informative, and the most up-to-date criteria for the correct use of pairing-based cryptography. We thereby deliberately avoid most of the technical details and rather give special emphasis on the importance of the correct use of bilinear maps by realizing secure cryptographic protocols. We list a collection of some recent papers having wrong security assumptions or realizability/efficiency issues. Finally, we give a compact and an up-to-date recipe of the correct use of pairings.Comment: 25 page

Generic Constructions of Revocable Hierarchical Identity-based Encryption

Revocable hierarchical identity-based encryption (RHIBE) is an extension of hierarchical identity-based encryption (HIBE) supporting the key revocation mechanism. In this paper, we propose a generic construction of RHIBE from HIBE with the complete subtree method. Then, we obtain the first RHIBE schemes under the quadratic residuosity assumption, CDH assumption without pairing, factoring Blum integers, LPN assumption, and code-based assumption, and the first almost tightly secure RHIBE schemes under the k-linear assumption. Furthermore, by using pairing-based (dual) identity-based broadcast encryption, we obtain the variants of the scheme with shorter ciphertexts or shorter key updates

Efficient Identity-Based Encryption with Hierarchical Key-Insulation from HIBE

Hierarchical key-insulated identity-based encryption (HKIBE) is identity-based encryption (IBE) that allows users to update their secret keys to achieve (hierarchical) key-exposure resilience, which is an important notion in practice. However, existing HKIBE constructions have limitations in efficiency: sizes of ciphertexts and secret keys depend on the hierarchical depth. In this paper, we first triumph over the barrier by proposing simple but effective design methodologies to construct efficient HKIBE schemes. First, we show a generic construction from any hierarchical IBE (HIBE) scheme that satisfies a special requirement, called MSK evaluatability introduced by Emura et al. (Designs, Codes and Cryptography, 2021). It provides several new and efficient instantiations since most pairing-based HIBE schemes satisfy the requirement. It is worth noting that it preserves all parameters\u27 sizes of the underlying HIBE scheme, and hence we obtain several efficient HKIBE schemes under the $k$-linear assumption in the standard model. Since MSK evaluatability is dedicated to pairing-based HIBE schemes, the first construction restricts pairing-based instantiations. To realize efficient instantiation from various assumptions, we next propose a generic construction of an HKIBE scheme from any plain HIBE scheme. It is based on Hanaoka et al.\u27s HKIBE scheme (Asiacrypt 2005), and does not need any special properties. Therefore, we obtain new efficient instantiations from various assumptions other than pairing-oriented ones. Though the sizes of secret keys and ciphertexts are larger than those of the first construction, it is more efficient than Hanaoka et al.\u27s scheme in the sense of the sizes of master public/secret keys

Tightly Secure Hierarchical Identity-Based Encryption

We construct the first tightly secure hierarchical identity-based encryption (HIBE) scheme based on standard assumptions, which solves an open problem from Blazy, Kiltz, and Pan (CRYPTO 2014). At the core of our constructions is a novel randomization technique that enables us to randomize user secret keys for identities with flexible length. The security reductions of previous HIBEs lose at least a factor of Q, which is the number of user secret key queries. Different to that, the security loss of our schemes is only dependent on the security parameter. Our schemes are adaptively secure based on the Matrix Diffie-Hellman assumption, which is a generalization of standard Diffie-Hellman assumptions such as k-Linear. We have two tightly secure constructions, one with constant ciphertext size, and the other with tighter security at the cost of linear ciphertext size. Among other things, our schemes imply the first tightly secure identity-based signature scheme by a variant of the Naor transformation

An Identity-Based Group Signature with Membership Revocation in the Standard Model

Group signatures allow group members to sign an arbitrary number\ud of messages on behalf of the group without revealing their\ud identity. Under certain circumstances the group manager holding a\ud tracing key can reveal the identity of the signer from the\ud signature. Practical group signature schemes should support\ud membership revocation where the revoked member loses the\ud capability to sign a message on behalf of the group without\ud influencing the other non-revoked members. A model known as\ud \emph{verifier-local revocation} supports membership revocation.\ud In this model the trusted revocation authority sends revocation\ud messages to the verifiers and there is no need for the trusted\ud revocation authority to contact non-revoked members to update\ud their secret keys. Previous constructions of verifier-local\ud revocation group signature schemes either have a security proof in the\ud random oracle model or are non-identity based. A security proof\ud in the random oracle model is only a heuristic proof and\ud non-identity-based group signature suffer from standard Public Key\ud Infrastructure (PKI) problems, i.e. the group public key is not\ud derived from the group identity and therefore has to be certified.\ud \ud \ud In this work we construct the first verifier-local revocation group\ud signature scheme which is identity-based and which has a security proof in the standard model. In\ud particular, we give a formal security model for the proposed\ud scheme and prove that the scheme has the\ud property of selfless-anonymity under the decision Linear (DLIN)\ud assumption and it is fully-traceable under the\ud Computation Diffie-Hellman (CDH) assumption. The proposed scheme is based on prime order bilinear\ud groups

Outsider-Anonymous Broadcast Encryption with Keyword Search: Generic Construction, CCA Security, and with Sublinear Ciphertexts

As a multi-receiver variants of public key encryption with keyword search (PEKS), broadcast encryption with keyword search (BEKS) has been proposed (Attrapadung et al. at ASIACRYPT 2006/Chatterjee-Mukherjee at INDOCRYPT 2018). Unlike broadcast encryption, no receiver anonymity is considered because the test algorithm takes a set of receivers as input and thus a set of receivers needs to be contained in a ciphertext. In this paper, we propose a generic construction of BEKS from anonymous and weakly robust 3-level hierarchical identity-based encryption (HIBE). The proposed generic construction provides outsider anonymity, where an adversary is allowed to obtain secret keys of outsiders who do not belong to the challenge sets, and provides sublinear-size ciphertext in terms of the number of receivers. Moreover, the proposed construction considers security against chosen-ciphertext attack (CCA) where an adversary is allowed to access a test oracle in the searchable encryption context. The proposed generic construction can be seen as an extension to the Fazio-Perera generic construction of anonymous broadcast encryption (PKC 2012) from anonymous and weakly robust identity-based encryption (IBE) and the Boneh et al. generic construction of PEKS (EUROCRYPT 2004) from anonymous IBE. We run the Fazio-Perera construction employs on the first-level identity and run the Boneh et al. generic construction on the second-level identity, i.e., a keyword is regarded as a second-level identity. The third-level identity is used for providing CCA security by employing one-time signatures. We also introduce weak robustness in the HIBE setting, and demonstrate that the Abdalla et al. generic transformation (TCC 2010/JoC 2018) for providing weak robustness to IBE works for HIBE with an appropriate parameter setting. We also explicitly introduce attractive concrete instantiations of the proposed generic construction from pairings and lattices, respectively

Simpler Constructions of Asymmetric Primitives from Obfuscation

We revisit constructions of asymmetric primitives from obfuscation and give simpler alternatives. We consider public-key encryption, (hierarchical) identity-based encryption ((H)IBE), and predicate encryption. Obfuscation has already been shown to imply PKE by Sahai and Waters (STOC\u2714) and full-fledged functional encryption by Garg et al. (FOCS\u2713). We simplify all these constructions and reduce the necessary assumptions on the class of circuits that the obfuscator needs to support. Our PKE scheme relies on just a PRG and does not need any puncturing. Our IBE and bounded HIBE schemes convert natural key-delegation mechanisms from (recursive) applications of puncturable PRFs to IBE and HIBE schemes. Our most technical contribution is an unbounded HIBE, which uses (public-coin) differing-inputs obfuscation for circuits and whose proof relies on a recent pebbling-based hybrid argument by Fuchsbauer et al. (ASIACRYPT\u2714). All our constructions are anonymous, support arbitrary inputs, and have compact keys and ciphertexts

Identity-Based Matchmaking Encryption, Revisited: Strong Security and Practical Constructions from Standard Classical and Post-Quantum Assumptions

Identity-based matchmaking encryption (IB-ME) [Ateniese et al. Crypto 2019] allows users to communicate privately in an anonymous and authenticated manner. After the seminal paper by Ateniese et al., a lot of work has been done on the security and construction of IB-ME. In this work, we revisit the security definitions and construction of IB-ME and provide the following three contributions. -- First, we embark on the task of classifying the existing security notions of IB-ME. We systematically categorize privacy into three core categories (CPA, CCA, and privacy in the case of mismatch) and authenticity into four categories (NMA and CMA both against insiders and outsiders). In particular, we reconsider privacy when the sender\u27s identity is mismatched during decryption, considered as ``enhanced privacy\u27\u27~[Francati et al., INDOCRYPT 2021], and provide a new simple security game, called mismatch security, that captures the essence of it. This structured framework not only facilitates more precise comparisons between different IB-ME schemes, but also serves as a valuable tool for evaluating the security of newly proposed schemes. -- Second, we propose a highly efficient and strongly secure IB-ME scheme from the bilinear Diffie-Hellman assumption in the random oracle model. The scheme is based on the Ateniese et al. scheme, but we introduce several techniques to improve its security and efficiency. Especially, we found that the Fujisaki-Okamoto transformation enhances not only privacy but also authenticity. As a result, we obtain a scheme that offers a more compact decryption key and ciphertext than the Ateniese et al. scheme, while achieving CCA and CMA, and mismatch security. -- Third, we propose a new generic construction of IB-ME from anonymous identity-based encryption, identity-based signature, and reusable extractors. Our construction not only achieves CCA, CMA, and mismatch security, but is also the most efficient among existing generic constructions. Through this construction, we obtain various IB-ME schemes from both classical and post-quantum assumptions. For example, we obtain a more efficient scheme from the symmetric external Diffie-Hellman assumption in the standard model, and a practical scheme from lattices in the quantum random oracle model whose secret keys and ciphertexts are less than 5 kilobytes. Moreover, our generic construction produces the first pairing-free IB-ME scheme in the standard model and the first tightly secure lattice-based IB-ME scheme in the quantum random oracle model

Compact CCA2-secure Hierarchical Identity-Based Broadcast Encryption for Fuzzy-entity Data Sharing

With the advances of cloud computing, data sharing becomes easier for large-scale enterprises. When deploying privacy and security schemes in data sharing systems, fuzzy-entity data sharing, entity management, and efficiency must take into account, especially when the system is asked to share data with a large number of users in a tree-like structure. (Hierarchical) Identity-Based Encryption is a promising candidate to ensure fuzzy-entity data sharing functionalities while meeting the security requirement, but encounters efficiency difficulty in multi-user settings. This paper proposes a new primitive called Hierarchical Identity-Based Broadcast Encryption (HIBBE) to support multi-user data sharing mechanism. Similar to HIBE, HIBBE organizes users in a tree-like structure and users can delegate their decryption capability to their subordinates. Unlike HIBE merely allowing a single decryption path, HIBBE enables encryption to any subset of the users and only the intended users (and their supervisors) can decrypt. We define Ciphertext Indistinguishability against Adaptively Chosen-Identity-Vector-Set and Chosen-Ciphertext Attack (IND-CIVS-CCA2) for HIBBE, which capture the most powerful attacks in the real world. We achieve this goal in the standard model in two steps. We first construct an efficient HIBBE Scheme (HIBBES) against Adaptively Chosen-Identity-Vector-Set and Chosen-Plaintext Attack (IND-CIVS-CPA) in which the attacker is not allowed to query the decryption oracle. Then we convert it into an IND-CIVS-CCA2 scheme at only a marginal cost, i.e., merely adding one on-the-fly dummy user at the first depth of hierarchy in the basic scheme without requiring any other cryptographic primitives. Our CCA2-secure scheme natively allows public ciphertext validity test, which is a useful property when a CCA2-secure HIBBES is used to design advanced protocols and auditing mechanisms for HIBBE-based data sharing