Design and Analysis of Opaque Signatures

Digital signatures were introduced to guarantee the authenticity and integrity of the underlying messages. A digital signature scheme comprises the key generation, the signature, and the verification algorithms. The key generation algorithm creates the signing and the verifying keys, called also the signer’s private and public keys respectively. The signature algorithm, which is run by the signer, produces a signature on the input message. Finally, the verification algorithm, run by anyone who knows the signer’s public key, checks whether a purported signature on some message is valid or not. The last property, namely the universal verification of digital signatures is undesirable in situations where the signed data is commercially or personally sensitive. Therefore, mechanisms which share most properties with digital signatures except for the universal verification were invented to respond to the aforementioned need; we call such mechanisms “opaque signatures”. In this thesis, we study the signatures where the verification cannot be achieved without the cooperation of a specific entity, namely the signer in case of undeniable signatures, or the confirmer in case of confirmer signatures; we make three main contributions. We first study the relationship between two security properties important for public key encryption, namely data privacy and key privacy. Our study is motivated by the fact that opaque signatures involve always an encryption layer that ensures their opacity. The properties required for this encryption vary according to whether we want to protect the identity (i.e. the key) of the signer or hide the validity of the signature. Therefore, it would be convenient to use existing work about the encryption scheme in order to derive one notion from the other. Next, we delve into the generic constructions of confirmer signatures from basic cryptographic primitives, e.g. digital signatures, encryption, or commitment schemes. In fact, generic constructions give easy-to-understand and easy-to-prove schemes, however, this convenience is often achieved at the expense of efficiency. In this contribution, which constitutes the core of this thesis, we first analyze the already existing constructions; our study concludes that the popular generic constructions of confirmer signatures necessitate strong security assumptions on the building blocks, which impacts negatively the efficiency of the resulting signatures. Next, we show that a small change in these constructionsmakes these assumptions drop drastically, allowing as a result constructions with instantiations that compete with the dedicated realizations of these signatures. Finally, we revisit two early undeniable signatures which were proposed with a conjectural security. We disprove the claimed security of the first scheme, and we provide a fix to it in order to achieve strong security properties. Next, we upgrade the second scheme so that it supports a iii desirable feature, and we provide a formal security treatment of the new scheme: we prove that it is secure assuming new reasonable assumptions on the underlying constituents

An architecture for secure data management in medical research and aided diagnosis

Programa Oficial de Doutoramento en Tecnoloxías da Información e as Comunicacións. 5032V01[Resumo] O Regulamento Xeral de Proteccion de Datos (GDPR) implantouse o 25 de maio de 2018 e considerase o desenvolvemento mais importante na regulacion da privacidade de datos dos ultimos 20 anos. As multas fortes definense por violar esas regras e non e algo que os centros sanitarios poidan permitirse ignorar. O obxectivo principal desta tese e estudar e proponer unha capa segura/integracion para os curadores de datos sanitarios, onde: a conectividade entre sistemas illados (localizacions), a unificacion de rexistros nunha vision centrada no paciente e a comparticion de datos coa aprobacion do consentimento sexan as pedras angulares de a arquitectura controlar a sua identidade, os perfis de privacidade e as subvencions de acceso. Ten como obxectivo minimizar o medo a responsabilidade legal ao compartir os rexistros medicos mediante o uso da anonimizacion e facendo que os pacientes sexan responsables de protexer os seus propios rexistros medicos, pero preservando a calidade do tratamento do paciente. A nosa hipotese principal e: os conceptos Distributed Ledger e Self-Sovereign Identity son unha simbiose natural para resolver os retos do GDPR no contexto da saude? Requirense solucions para que os medicos e investigadores poidan manter os seus fluxos de traballo de colaboracion sen comprometer as regulacions. A arquitectura proposta logra eses obxectivos nun ambiente descentralizado adoptando perfis de privacidade de datos illados.[Resumen] El Reglamento General de Proteccion de Datos (GDPR) se implemento el 25 de mayo de 2018 y se considera el desarrollo mas importante en la regulacion de privacidad de datos en los ultimos 20 anos. Las fuertes multas estan definidas por violar esas reglas y no es algo que los centros de salud puedan darse el lujo de ignorar. El objetivo principal de esta tesis es estudiar y proponer una capa segura/de integración para curadores de datos de atencion medica, donde: la conectividad entre sistemas aislados (ubicaciones), la unificacion de registros en una vista centrada en el paciente y el intercambio de datos con la aprobacion del consentimiento son los pilares de la arquitectura propuesta. Esta propuesta otorga al titular de los datos un rol central, que le permite controlar su identidad, perfiles de privacidad y permisos de acceso. Su objetivo es minimizar el temor a la responsabilidad legal al compartir registros medicos utilizando el anonimato y haciendo que los pacientes sean responsables de proteger sus propios registros medicos, preservando al mismo tiempo la calidad del tratamiento del paciente. Nuestra hipotesis principal es: .son los conceptos de libro mayor distribuido e identidad autosuficiente una simbiosis natural para resolver los desafios del RGPD en el contexto de la atencion medica? Se requieren soluciones para que los medicos y los investigadores puedan mantener sus flujos de trabajo de colaboracion sin comprometer las regulaciones. La arquitectura propuesta logra esos objetivos en un entorno descentralizado mediante la adopcion de perfiles de privacidad de datos aislados.[Abstract] The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was implemented on 25 May 2018 and is considered the most important development in data privacy regulation in the last 20 years. Heavy fines are defined for violating those rules and is not something that healthcare centers can afford to ignore. The main goal of this thesis is to study and propose a secure/integration layer for healthcare data curators, where: connectivity between isolated systems (locations), unification of records in a patientcentric view and data sharing with consent approval are the cornerstones of the proposed architecture. This proposal empowers the data subject with a central role, which allows to control their identity, privacy profiles and access grants. It aims to minimize the fear of legal liability when sharing medical records by using anonymisation and making patients responsible for securing their own medical records, yet preserving the patient’s quality of treatment. Our main hypothesis is: are the Distributed Ledger and Self-Sovereign Identity concepts a natural symbiosis to solve the GDPR challenges in the context of healthcare? Solutions are required so that clinicians and researchers can maintain their collaboration workflows without compromising regulations. The proposed architecture accomplishes those objectives in a decentralized environment by adopting isolated data privacy profiles

Authentication in Protected Core Networking

Protected Core Networking (PCN) is a concept that aims to increase information sharing between nations in coalition military operations. PCN specifies the interconnection of national transport networks, called Protected Core Segments (PCSs), to a federated transport network called Protected Core (PCore). PCore is intended to deliver high availability differentiated transport services to its user networks, called Colored Clouds (CCs). To achieve this goal, entity authentication of all connecting entities is specified as a protective measure. In resource constrained environments, the distribution of service policy can be challenging. That is, which transport services are associated with a given entity. The thesis proposes two new and original protocols where CCs push service policy to the network by performing authentication based on attributes. Using identity-based signatures, attributes constituting a service policy are used directly for an entity's identity, and no external mechanism linking identity and policy is needed. For interoperability, the idea has been incorporated into PKINIT Kerberos and symmetric key Kerberos by carrying the authorized attributes within tickets. The proposed protocols are formally verified in the symbolic model using scyther-proof. The experiment shows that both CCs, and PCSs achieve greater assurance on agreed attributes, and hence on expected service delivery. A CC and a visiting PCS are able to negotiate, and agree on the expected service depending on the situation. The proposed solution provides benefits to CCs on expected service when connecting to a visiting PCS, with poor connectivity to the home PCS. In that respect, interconnection of entities with little pre-established relationship is simplified, and hence fulfillment of the PCN concept is facilitated

Short undeniable signatures:design, analysis, and applications

Digital signatures are one of the main achievements of public-key cryptography and constitute a fundamental tool to ensure data authentication. Although their universal verifiability has the advantage to facilitate their verification by the recipient, this property may have undesirable consequences when dealing with sensitive and private information. Motivated by such considerations, undeniable signatures, whose verification requires the cooperation of the signer in an interactive way, were invented. This thesis is mainly devoted to the design and analysis of short undeniable signatures. Exploiting their online property, we can achieve signatures with a fully scalable size depending on the security requirements. To this end, we develop a general framework based on the interpolation of group elements by a group homomorphism, leading to the design of a generic undeniable signature scheme. On the one hand, this paradigm allows to consider some previous undeniable signature schemes in a unified setting. On the other hand, by selecting group homomorphisms with a small group range, we obtain very short signatures. After providing theoretical results related to the interpolation of group homomorphisms, we develop some interactive proofs in which the prover convinces a verifier of the interpolation (resp. non-interpolation) of some given points by a group homomorphism which he keeps secret. Based on these protocols, we devise our new undeniable signature scheme and prove its security in a formal way. We theoretically analyze the special class of group characters on Z*n. After studying algorithmic aspects of the homomorphism evaluation, we compare the efficiency of different homomorphisms and show that the Legendre symbol leads to the fastest signature generation. We investigate potential applications based on the specific properties of our signature scheme. Finally, in a topic closely related to undeniable signatures, we revisit the designated confirmer signature of Chaum and formally prove the security of a generalized version

Research Philosophy of Modern Cryptography

Proposing novel cryptography schemes (e.g., encryption, signatures, and protocols) is one of the main research goals in modern cryptography. In this paper, based on more than 800 research papers since 1976 that we have surveyed, we introduce the research philosophy of cryptography behind these papers. We use ``benefits and ``novelty as the keywords to introduce the research philosophy of proposing new schemes, assuming that there is already one scheme proposed for a cryptography notion. Next, we introduce how benefits were explored in the literature and we have categorized the methodology into 3 ways for benefits, 6 types of benefits, and 17 benefit areas. As examples, we introduce 40 research strategies within these benefit areas that were invented in the literature. The introduced research strategies have covered most cryptography schemes published in top-tier cryptography conferences

Synchronization of multi-carrier CDMA signals and security on internet.

by Yooh Ji Heng.Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1996.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 119-128).Appendix in Chinese.Chapter I --- Synchronization of Multi-carrier CDMA Signals --- p.1Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.2Chapter 1.1 --- Spread Spectrum CDMA --- p.4Chapter 1.1.1 --- Direct Sequence/SS-CDMA --- p.5Chapter 1.1.2 --- Frequency Hopping/SS-CDMA --- p.5Chapter 1.1.3 --- Pseudo-noise Sequence --- p.6Chapter 1.2 --- Synchronization for CDMA signal --- p.7Chapter 1.2.1 --- Acquisition of PN Sequence --- p.7Chapter 1.2.2 --- Phase Locked Loop --- p.8Chapter 2 --- Multi-carrier CDMA --- p.10Chapter 2.1 --- System Model --- p.11Chapter 2.2 --- Crest Factor --- p.12Chapter 2.3 --- Shapiro-Rudin Sequence --- p.14Chapter 3 --- Synchronization and Detection by Line-Fitting --- p.16Chapter 3.1 --- Unmodulated Signals --- p.16Chapter 3.2 --- Estimating the Time Shift by Line-Fitting --- p.19Chapter 3.3 --- Modulated Signals --- p.22Chapter 4 --- Matched Filter --- p.23Chapter 5 --- Performance and Conclusion --- p.27Chapter 5.1 --- Line Fitting Algorithm --- p.27Chapter 5.2 --- Matched Filter --- p.28Chapter 5.3 --- Conclusion --- p.30Chapter II --- Security on Internet --- p.31Chapter 6 --- Introduction --- p.32Chapter 6.1 --- Introduction to Cryptography --- p.32Chapter 6.1.1 --- Classical Cryptography --- p.33Chapter 6.1.2 --- Cryptanalysis --- p.35Chapter 6.2 --- Introduction to Internet Security --- p.35Chapter 6.2.1 --- The Origin of Internet --- p.35Chapter 6.2.2 --- Internet Security --- p.36Chapter 6.2.3 --- Internet Commerce --- p.37Chapter 7 --- Elementary Number Theory --- p.39Chapter 7.1 --- Finite Field Theory --- p.39Chapter 7.1.1 --- Euclidean Algorithm --- p.40Chapter 7.1.2 --- Chinese Remainder Theorem --- p.40Chapter 7.1.3 --- Modular Exponentiation --- p.41Chapter 7.2 --- One-way Hashing Function --- p.42Chapter 7.2.1 --- MD2 --- p.43Chapter 7.2.2 --- MD5 --- p.43Chapter 7.3 --- Prime Number --- p.44Chapter 7.3.1 --- Listing of Prime Number --- p.45Chapter 7.3.2 --- Primality Testing --- p.45Chapter 7.4 --- Random/Pseudo-Random Number --- p.47Chapter 7.4.1 --- Examples of Random Number Generator --- p.49Chapter 8 --- Private Key and Public Key Cryptography --- p.51Chapter 8.1 --- Block Ciphers --- p.51Chapter 8.1.1 --- Data Encryption Standard (DES) --- p.52Chapter 8.1.2 --- International Data Encryption Algorithm (IDEA) --- p.54Chapter 8.1.3 --- RC5 --- p.55Chapter 8.2 --- Stream Ciphers --- p.56Chapter 8.2.1 --- RC2 and RC4 --- p.57Chapter 8.3 --- Public Key Cryptosystem --- p.58Chapter 8.3.1 --- Diffie-Hellman --- p.60Chapter 8.3.2 --- Knapsack Algorithm --- p.60Chapter 8.3.3 --- RSA --- p.62Chapter 8.3.4 --- Elliptic Curve Cryptosystem --- p.63Chapter 8.3.5 --- Public Key vs. Private Key Cryptosystem --- p.64Chapter 8.4 --- Digital Signature --- p.65Chapter 8.4.1 --- ElGamal Signature Scheme --- p.66Chapter 8.4.2 --- Digital Signature Standard (DSS) --- p.67Chapter 8.5 --- Cryptanalysis to Current Cryptosystems --- p.68Chapter 8.5.1 --- Differential Cryptanalysis --- p.68Chapter 8.5.2 --- An Attack to RC4 in Netscapel.l --- p.69Chapter 8.5.3 --- "An Timing Attack to Diffie-Hellman, RSA" --- p.71Chapter 9 --- Network Security and Electronic Commerce --- p.73Chapter 9.1 --- Network Security --- p.73Chapter 9.1.1 --- Password --- p.73Chapter 9.1.2 --- Network Firewalls --- p.76Chapter 9.2 --- Implementation for Network Security --- p.79Chapter 9.2.1 --- Kerberos --- p.79Chapter 9.2.2 --- Privacy-Enhanced Mail (PEM) --- p.80Chapter 9.2.3 --- Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) --- p.82Chapter 9.3 --- Internet Commerce --- p.83Chapter 9.3.1 --- Electronic Cash --- p.85Chapter 9.4 --- Internet Browsers --- p.87Chapter 9.4.1 --- Secure NCSA Mosaic --- p.87Chapter 9.4.2 --- Netscape Navigator --- p.89Chapter 9.4.3 --- SunSoft HotJava --- p.91Chapter 10 --- Examples of Electronic Commerce System --- p.94Chapter 10.1 --- CyberCash --- p.95Chapter 10.2 --- DigiCash --- p.97Chapter 10.3 --- The Financial Services Technology Consortium --- p.98Chapter 10.3.1 --- Electronic Check Project --- p.99Chapter 10.3.2 --- Electronic Commerce Project --- p.101Chapter 10.4 --- FirstVirtual --- p.103Chapter 10.5 --- Mondex --- p.104Chapter 10.6 --- NetBill --- p.106Chapter 10.7 --- NetCash --- p.108Chapter 10.8 --- NetCheque --- p.111Chapter 11 --- Conclusion --- p.113Chapter A --- An Essay on Chinese Remainder Theorem and RSA --- p.115Bibliography --- p.11

Towards End-to-End Data Privacy: from Generation to Consumption

Preserving data privacy is a formidable challenge in today’s interconnected and data-centric world. Individuals are surrounded by “smart” devices that collect and generate massive amounts of sensitive data. Moreover, organizations collect personalized data, including private information, to provide more functionalities and better quality for their data-driven services. Therefore, ensuring data privacy throughout its lifecycle, i.e., from generation to consumption, is paramount.To this end, this dissertation tackles several challenges to attain such end-to-end data privacy. We first investigate lower-end devices to preserve data privacy from its generation, and propose two secure architectures: one for mid-range devices with memory management unit and the other for low-end devices with no security features. Then, we revisit cryptographic computing, a promising privacy-enhancing technology for data in use, focusing on input correctness, generalized adversary models, and challenges in real-world applications