Efficient signature verification and key revocation using identity based cryptography

Cryptography deals with the development and evaluation of procedures for securing digital information. It is essential whenever multiple entities want to communicate safely. One task of cryptography concerns digital signatures and the verification of a signer’s legitimacy requires trustworthy authentication and authorization. This is achieved by deploying cryptographic keys. When dynamic membership behavior and identity theft come into play, revocation of keys has to be addressed. Additionally, in use cases with limited networking, computational, or storage resources, efficiency is a key requirement for any solution. In this work we present a solution for signature verification and key revocation in constraned environments, e.g., in the Internet of Things (IoT). Where other mechanisms generate expensive overheads, we achieve revocation through a single multicast message without significant computational or storage overhead. Exploiting Identity Based Cryptography (IBC) complements the approach with efficient creation and verification of signatures. Our solution offers a framework for transforming a suitable signature scheme to a so-called Key Updatable Signature Scheme (KUSS) in three steps. Each step defines mathematical conditions for transformation and precise security notions. Thereby, the framework allows a novel combination of efficient Identity Based Signature (IBS) schemes with revocation mechanisms originally designed for confidentiality in group communications. Practical applicability of our framework is demonstrated by transforming four well-established IBS schemes based on Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC). The security of the resulting group Identity Based Signature (gIBS) schemes is carefully analyzed with techniques of Provable Security. We design and implement a testbed for evaluating these kind of cryptographic schemes on different computing- and networking hardware, typical for constrained environments. Measurements on this testbed provide evidence that the transformations are practicable and efficient. The revocation complexity in turn is significantly reduced compared to existing solutions. Some of our new schemes even outperform the signing process of the widely used Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA). The presented transformations allow future application on schemes beyond IBS or ECC. This includes use cases dealing with Post-Quantum Cryptography, where the revocation efficiency is similarly relevant. Our work provides the basis for such solutions currently under investigation.Die Kryptographie ist ein Instrument der Informationssicherheit und beschäftigt sich mit der Entwicklung und Evaluierung von Algorithmen zur Sicherung digitaler Werte. Sie ist für die sichere Kommunikation zwischen mehreren Entitäten unerlässlich. Ein Bestandteil sind digitale Signaturen, für deren Erstellung man kryptographische Schlüssel benötigt. Bei der Verifikation muss zusätzlich die Authentizität und die Autorisierung des Unterzeichners gewährleistet werden. Dafür müssen Schlüssel vertrauensvoll verteilt und verwaltet werden. Wenn sie in Kommunikationssystemen mit häufig wechselnden Teilnehmern zum Einsatz kommen, müssen die Schlüssel auch widerruflich sein. In Anwendungsfällen mit eingeschränkter Netz-, Rechen- und Speicherkapazität ist die Effizienz ein wichtiges Kriterium. Diese Arbeit liefert ein Rahmenwerk, mit dem Schlüssel effizient widerrufen und Signaturen effizient verifiziert werden können. Dabei fokussieren wir uns auf Szenarien aus dem Bereich des Internets der Dinge (IoT, Internet of Things). Im Gegensatz zu anderen Lösungen ermöglicht unser Ansatz den Widerruf von Schlüsseln mit einer einzelnen Nachricht innerhalb einer Kommunikationsgruppe. Dabei fällt nur geringer zusätzlicher Rechen- oder Speicheraufwand an. Ferner vervollständigt die Verwendung von Identitätsbasierter Kryptographie (IBC, Identity Based Cryptography) unsere Lösung mit effizienter Erstellung und Verifikation der Signaturen. Hierfür liefert die Arbeit eine dreistufige mathematische Transformation von geeigneten Signaturverfahren zu sogenannten Key Updatable Signature Schemes (KUSS). Neben einer präzisen Definition der Sicherheitsziele werden für jeden Schritt mathematische Vorbedingungen zur Transformation festgelegt. Dies ermöglicht die innovative Kombination von Identitätsbasierten Signaturen (IBS, Identity Based Signature) mit effizienten und sicheren Mechanismen zum Schlüsselaustausch, die ursprünglich für vertrauliche Gruppenkommunikation entwickelt wurden. Wir zeigen die erfolgreiche Anwendung der Transformationen auf vier etablierten IBSVerfahren. Die ausschließliche Verwendung von Verfahren auf Basis der Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) erlaubt es, den geringen Kapazitäten der Zielgeräte gerecht zu werden. Eine Analyse aller vier sogenannten group Identity Based Signature (gIBS) Verfahren mit Techniken aus dem Forschungsgebiet der Beweisbaren Sicherheit zeigt, dass die zuvor definierten Sicherheitsziele erreicht werden. Zur praktischen Evaluierung unserer und ähnlicher kryptographischer Verfahren wird in dieser Arbeit eine Testumgebung entwickelt und mit IoT-typischen Rechen- und Netzmodulen bestückt. Hierdurch zeigt sich sowohl die praktische Anwendbarkeit der Transformationen als auch eine deutliche Reduktion der Komplexität gegenüber anderen Lösungsansätzen. Einige der von uns vorgeschlagenen Verfahren unterbieten gar die Laufzeiten des meistgenutzten Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) bei der Erstellung der Signaturen. Die Systematik der Lösung erlaubt prinzipiell auch die Transformation von Verfahren jenseits von IBS und ECC. Dadurch können auch Anwendungsfälle aus dem Bereich der Post-Quanten-Kryptographie von unseren Ergebnissen profitieren. Die vorliegende Arbeit liefert die nötigen Grundlagen für solche Erweiterungen, die aktuell diskutiert und entwickelt werden

Privacy-Preserving Protocols for Vehicular Transport Systems

La present tesi es centra en la privadesa dels ciutadans com a usuaris de mitjans de transport vehiculars dins del marc d'una e-society. En concret, les contribucions de la tesi es focalitzen en les subcategories d'estacionament de vehicles privats en zones públiques regulades i en la realització de transbordaments entre línies intercomunicades en l'àmbit del transport públic. Una anàlisi acurada de les dades recopilades pels proveedors d'aquests serveis, sobre un determinat usuari, pot proporcionar informació personal sensible com per exemple: horari laboral, professió, hobbies, problemes de salut, tendències polítiques, inclinacions sexuals, etc. Tot i que existeixin lleis, com l'europea GDPR, que obliguin a utilitzar les dades recollides de forma correcta per part dels proveedors de serveis, ja sigui a causa d'un atac informàtic o per una filtració interna, aquestes dades poden ser utilitzades per finalitats il·legals. Per tant, el disseny protocols que garanteixin la privadesa dels ciutadans que formen part d'una e-society esdevé una tasca de gran importància.La presente tesis se centra en la privacidad de los ciudadanos en el transporte vehicular dentro del marco de una e-society. En concreto, las contribuciones de la tesis se centran en las subcategorías de estacionamiento de vehículos privados en zonas públicas reguladas y en la realización de transbordos entre líneas interconectadas en el ámbito del transporte público. Una análisi acurada de los datos recopilados por los proveedores de los servicios, sobre un determinado usuario, puede proporcionar información personal sensible como por ejemplo: horario laboral, profesión, hobbies, problemas de salud, tendencias políticas, inclinaciones sexuales, etc. A pesar que hay leyes, como la europea GDPR, que obligan a usar de forma correcta los datos recopilados por parte de los proveedores de servicios, ya sea por un ataque informático o por una filtración interna, estos datos pueden utilizarse para fines ilegales. Por lo tanto, es vital diseñar protocolos que garanticen la privacidad de los ciudadanos que forman parte de una e-society.This thesis is focused on the privacy of citizens while using vehicular transport systems within an e-society frame. Specifically, the thesis contributes to two subcategories. The first one refers to pay-by-phone systems for parking vehicles in regulated public areas. The second one is about the use of e-tickets in public transport systems allowing transfers between connecting lines. A careful analysis of data collected by service providers can provide sensitive personal information such as: work schedule, profession, hobbies, health problems, political tendencies, sexual inclinations, etc. Although the law, like the European GDPR, requires the correct use of the data collected by service providers, data can be used for illegal purposes after being stolen as a result of a cyber-attack or after being leaked by an internal dishonest employee. Therefore, the design of privacy-preserving solutions for mobility-based services is mandatory in the e-society

Private set intersection: A systematic literature review

Secure Multi-party Computation (SMPC) is a family of protocols which allow some parties to compute a function on their private inputs, obtaining the output at the end and nothing more. In this work, we focus on a particular SMPC problem named Private Set Intersection (PSI). The challenge in PSI is how two or more parties can compute the intersection of their private input sets, while the elements that are not in the intersection remain private. This problem has attracted the attention of many researchers because of its wide variety of applications, contributing to the proliferation of many different approaches. Despite that, current PSI protocols still require heavy cryptographic assumptions that may be unrealistic in some scenarios. In this paper, we perform a Systematic Literature Review of PSI solutions, with the objective of analyzing the main scenarios where PSI has been studied and giving the reader a general taxonomy of the problem together with a general understanding of the most common tools used to solve it. We also analyze the performance using different metrics, trying to determine if PSI is mature enough to be used in realistic scenarios, identifying the pros and cons of each protocol and the remaining open problems.This work has been partially supported by the projects: BIGPrivDATA (UMA20-FEDERJA-082) from the FEDER Andalucía 2014– 2020 Program and SecTwin 5.0 funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation, Spain, and the European Union (Next Generation EU) (TED2021-129830B-I00). The first author has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education under the National F.P.U. Program (FPU19/01118). Funding for open access charge: Universidad de Málaga/CBU

ASKPIR: Authorized Symmetric Keyword Privacy Information Retrieval Protocol Based on DID

Symmetric Private Information Retrieval (SPIR) is a stronger PIR protocol that ensures both client and server privacy. In many cases, the client needs authorization from the data subject before querying data. However, this also means that the server can learn the identity of the data subject. To solve such problems, we propose a new SPIR primitive, called authorized symmetric keyword information retrieval protocol (ASKPIR). Specifically, we designed an efficient DID identification algorithm based on the Pedersen Commitment, which is used to solve the identity management and privacy problems of data subject when data is shared by multiple parties in a distributed environment. Then, we present a novel authorization algorithm combining NIZK proof and DID, which can preserve client privacy. Finally, to improve the efficiency of client retrieval, our protocol constructs PSI-Payload with mqRPMT and OTE so as to support batch keyword searches. In addition, we provide a formal security analysis for the anonymity and unforgeability of the protocol and demonstrate that ASKPIR can achieve malicious security under the UC framework. Theoretical analysis and experimental results show that the ASKPIR protocol is more efficient than other related works and solves the problem of incompatibility between data subject authorization and client privacy

EFFICIENT AND SCALABLE NETWORK SECURITY PROTOCOLS BASED ON LFSR SEQUENCES

The gap between abstract, mathematics-oriented research in cryptography and the engineering approach of designing practical, network security protocols is widening. Network researchers experiment with well-known cryptographic protocols suitable for different network models. On the other hand, researchers inclined toward theory often design cryptographic schemes without considering the practical network constraints. The goal of this dissertation is to address problems in these two challenging areas: building bridges between practical network security protocols and theoretical cryptography. This dissertation presents techniques for building performance sensitive security protocols, using primitives from linear feedback register sequences (LFSR) sequences, for a variety of challenging networking applications. The significant contributions of this thesis are: 1. A common problem faced by large-scale multicast applications, like real-time news feeds, is collecting authenticated feedback from the intended recipients. We design an efficient, scalable, and fault-tolerant technique for combining multiple signed acknowledgments into a single compact one and observe that most signatures (based on the discrete logarithm problem) used in previous protocols do not result in a scalable solution to the problem. 2. We propose a technique to authenticate on-demand source routing protocols in resource-constrained wireless mobile ad-hoc networks. We develop a single-round multisignature that requires no prior cooperation among nodes to construct the multisignature and supports authentication of cached routes. 3. We propose an efficient and scalable aggregate signature, tailored for applications like building efficient certificate chains, authenticating distributed and adaptive content management systems and securing path-vector routing protocols. 4. We observe that blind signatures could form critical building blocks of privacypreserving accountability systems, where an authority needs to vouch for the legitimacy of a message but the ownership of the message should be kept secret from the authority. We propose an efficient blind signature that can serve as a protocol building block for performance sensitive, accountability systems. All special forms digital signatures—aggregate, multi-, and blind signatures—proposed in this dissertation are the first to be constructed using LFSR sequences. Our detailed cost analysis shows that for a desired level of security, the proposed signatures outperformed existing protocols in computation cost, number of communication rounds and storage overhead

Efficient Verifiable Escrow and Fair Exchange with Trusted Hardware

At the heart of many fair exchange problems is verifiable escrow: a sender encrypts some value using the public key of a trusted party (called the recovery agent), and then must convince the receiver of the ciphertext that the corresponding plaintext satisfies some property (e.g., it contains the sender\u27s signature on a contract). Previous solutions to this problem are interactive, and often rely on communication-intensive cut-and-choose zero-knowledge proofs. In this paper, we provide a solution that uses generic trusted hardware to create an efficient, non-interactive verifiable escrow scheme. Our solution allows the protocol to use a set of recovery agents with a threshold access structure, the \emph{verifiable group escrow} notion which was informally introduced by Camenisch and Damgard and which is formalized here. Finally, this paper shows how this new non-interactive verifiable escrow scheme can be used to create an efficient optimistic protocol for fair exchange of signatures