(R)CCA Secure Updatable Encryption with Integrity Protection

An updatable encryption scheme allows a data host to update ciphertexts of a client from an old to a new key, given so-called update tokens from the client. Rotation of the encryption key is a common requirement in practice in order to mitigate the impact of key compromises over time. There are two incarnations of updatable encryption: One is ciphertext-dependent, i.e. the data owner has to (partially) download all of his data and derive a dedicated token per ciphertext. Everspaugh et al. (CRYPTO\u2717) proposed CCA and CTXT secure schemes in this setting. The other, more convenient variant is ciphertext-independent, i.e., it allows a single token to update all ciphertexts. However, so far, the broader functionality of tokens in this setting comes at the price of considerably weaker security: the existing schemes by Boneh et al. (CRYPTO\u2713) and Lehmann and Tackmann (EUROCRYPT\u2718) only achieve CPA security and provide no integrity protection. Arguably, when targeting the scenario of outsourcing data to an untrusted host, plaintext integrity should be a minimal security requirement. Otherwise, the data host may alter or inject ciphertexts arbitrarily. Indeed, the schemes from BLMR13 and LT18 suffer from this weakness, and even EPRS17 only provides integrity against adversaries which cannot arbitrarily inject ciphertexts. In this work, we provide the first ciphertext-independent updatable encryption schemes with security beyond \CPA, in particular providing strong integrity protection. Our constructions and security proofs of updatable encryption schemes are surprisingly modular. We give a generic transformation that allows key-rotation and confidentiality/integrity of the scheme to be treated almost separately, i.e., security of the updatable scheme is derived from simple properties of its static building blocks. An interesting side effect of our generic approach is that it immediately implies the unlinkability of ciphertext updates that was introduced as an essential additional property of updatable encryption by EPRS17 and LT18

Fast and Secure Updatable Encryption

Updatable encryption allows a client to outsource ciphertexts to some untrusted server and periodically rotate the encryption key. The server can update ciphertexts from an old key to a new key with the help of an update token, received from the client, which should not reveal anything about keys or plaintexts to an adversary. We provide a new and highly efficient suite of updatable encryption schemes that we collectively call SHINE. In the variant designed for short messages, ciphertext generation consists of applying one permutation and one exponentiation (per message block), while updating ciphertexts requires just one exponentiation. Variants for longer messages provide much stronger security guarantees than prior work that has comparable efficiency. We present a new confidentiality notion for updatable encryption schemes that implies prior notions. We prove that SHINE is secure under our new confidentiality definition while also providing ciphertext integrity

The Direction of Updatable Encryption does not Matter Much

Updatable encryption schemes allow for key rotation on ciphertexts. A client outsourcing storage of encrypted data to a cloud server can change its encryption key. The cloud server can update the stored ciphertexts to the new key using only a token provided by the client. This paper solves two open problems in updatable encryption, that of uni-directional vs. bi-directional updates, and post-quantum security. The main result in this paper is to analyze the security notions based on uni- and bi-directional updates. Surprisingly, we prove that uni- and bi-directional variants of each security notion are equivalent. The second result in this paper is to provide a new and efficient updatable encryption scheme based on the Decisional Learning with Error assumption. This gives us post-quantum security. Our scheme is bi-directional, but because of our main result, this is sufficient

Key Rotation for Authenticated Encryption

A common requirement in practice is to periodically rotate the keys used to encrypt stored data. Systems used by Amazon and Google do so using a hybrid encryption technique which is eminently practical but has questionable security in the face of key compromises and does not provide full key rotation. Meanwhile, symmetric updatable encryption schemes (introduced by Boneh et al. CRYPTO 2013) support full key rotation without performing decryption: ciphertexts created under one key can be rotated to ciphertexts created under a different key with the help of a re-encryption token. By design, the tokens do not leak information about keys or plaintexts and so can be given to storage providers without compromising security. But the prior work of Boneh et al. addresses relatively weak confidentiality goals and does not consider integrity at all. Moreover, as we show, a subtle issue with their concrete scheme obviates a security proof even for confidentiality against passive attacks. This paper presents a systematic study of updatable Authenticated Encryption (AE). We provide a set of security notions that strengthen those in prior work. These notions enable us to tease out real-world security requirements of different strengths and build schemes that satisfy them efficiently. We show that the hybrid approach currently used in industry achieves relatively weak forms of confidentiality and integrity, but can be modified at low cost to meet our stronger confidentiality and integrity goals. This leads to a practical scheme that has negligible overhead beyond conventional AE. We then introduce re-encryption indistinguishability, a security notion that formally captures the idea of fully refreshing keys upon rotation. We show how to repair the scheme of Boneh et al., attaining our stronger confidentiality notion. We also show how to extend the scheme to provide integrity, and we prove that it meets our re- encryption indistinguishability notion. Finally, we discuss how to instantiate our scheme efficiently using off-the-shelf cryptographic components (AE, hashing, elliptic curves). We report on the performance of a prototype implementation, showing that fully secure key rotations can be performed at a throughput of approximately 116 kB/s

Backward-Leak Uni-Directional Updatable Encryption from (Homomorphic) Public Key Encryption

The understanding of directionality for updatable encryption (UE) schemes is important, but not yet completed in the literature. We show that security in the backward-leak uni-directional key updates setting is equivalent to the no-directional one. Combining with the work of Jiang (ASIACRYPT 2020) and Nishimaki (PKC 2022), it is showed that the backward-leak notion is the strongest one among all known key update notions and more relevant in practice. We propose two novel generic constructions of UE schemes that are secure in the backward-leak uni-directional key update setting from public key encryption (PKE) schemes: the first one requires a key and message homomorphic PKE scheme and the second one requires a bootstrappable PKE scheme. These PKE can be constructed based on standard assumptions (such as the Decisional Diffie-Hellman and Learning With Errors assumptions)

Updatable Encryption from Group Actions

Updatable Encryption (UE) allows to rotate the encryption key in the outsourced storage setting while minimizing the bandwith used. The server can update ciphertexts to the new key using a token provided by the client. UE schemes should provide strong confidentiality guarantees against an adversary that can corrupt keys and tokens. This paper studies the problem of building UE in the group action framework. We introduce a new notion of Mappable Effective Group Action (MEGA) and show that we can build CCA secure UE from a MEGA by generalizing the SHINE construction of Boyd et al. at Crypto 2020. Unfortunately, we do not know how to instantiate this new construction in the post-quantum setting. Doing so would solve the open problem of building a CCA secure post-quantum UE scheme. Isogeny-based group actions are the most studied post-quantum group actions. Unfortunately, the resulting group actions are not mappable. We show that we can still build UE from isogenies by introducing a new algebraic structure called Effective Triple Orbital Group Action (ETOGA). We prove that UE can be built from an ETOGA and show how to instantiate this abstract structure from isogeny-based group actions. This new construction solves two open problems in ciphertext-independent post-quantum UE. First, this is the first post-quantum UE scheme that supports an unbounded number of updates. Second, our isogeny-based UE scheme is the first post-quantum UE scheme not based on lattices

Efficient Secure Storage with Version Control and Key Rotation

Periodic key rotation is a widely used technique to enhance key compromise resilience. Updatable encryption (UE) schemes provide an efficient approach to key rotation, ensuring post-compromise security for both confidentiality and integrity. However, these UE techniques cannot be directly applied to frequently updated databases due to the risk of a malicious server inducing the client to accept an outdated version of a file instead of the latest one. To address this issue, we propose a scheme called Updatable Secure Storage (USS), which provides a secure and key updatable solution for dynamic databases. USS ensures both data confidentiality and integrity, even in the presence of key compromises. By using efficient key rotation and file update procedures, the communication costs of these operations are independent of the size of the database. This makes USS particularly well-suited for managing large and frequently updated databases with secure version control. Unlike existing UE schemes, the integrity provided by USS holds even when the server learns the current secret key and intentionally violates the key update protocol

Improving Speed and Security in Updatable Encryption Schemes

Periodic key rotation is a common practice designed to limit the long-term power of cryptographic keys. Key rotation refers to the process of re-encrypting encrypted content under a fresh key, and overwriting the old ciphertext with the new one. When encrypted data is stored in the cloud, key rotation can be very costly: it may require downloading the entire encrypted content from the cloud, re-encrypting it on the client\u27s machine, and uploading the new ciphertext back to the cloud. An updatable encryption scheme is a symmetric-key encryption scheme designed to support efficient key rotation in the cloud. The data owner sends a short \emph{update token} to the cloud. This update token lets the cloud rotate the ciphertext from the old key to the new key, without learning any information about the plaintext. Recent work on updatable encryption has led to several security definitions and proposed constructions. However, existing constructions are not yet efficient enough for practical adoption, and the existing security definitions can be strengthened. In this work we make three contributions. First, we introduce stronger security definitions for updatable encryption (in the ciphertext-dependent setting) that capture desirable security properties not covered in prior work. Second, we construct two new updatable encryption schemes. The first construction relies only on symmetric cryptographic primitives, but only supports a bounded number of key rotations. The second construction supports a (nearly) unbounded number of updates, and is built from the Ring Learning with Errors (RLWE) assumption. Due to complexities of using RLWE, this scheme achieves a slightly weaker notion of integrity compared to the first. Finally, we implement both constructions and compare their performance to prior work. Our RLWE-based construction is 200x faster than a prior proposal for an updatable encryption scheme based on the hardness of elliptic curve DDH. Our first construction, based entirely on symmetric primitives, has the highest encryption throughput, approaching the performance of AES, and the highest decryption throughput on ciphertexts that were re-encrypted fewer than fifty times. For ciphertexts re-encrypted over fifty times, the RLWE construction dominates it in decryption speed