On Improving Communication Complexity in Cryptography

Cryptography grew to be much more than "the study of secret writing". Modern cryptography is concerned with establishing properties such as privacy, integrity and authenticity in protocols for secure communication and computation. This comes at a price: Cryptographic tools usually introduce an overhead, both in terms of communication complexity (that is, number and size of messages transmitted) and computational efficiency (that is, time and memory required). As in many settings communication between the parties involved is the bottleneck, this thesis is concerned with improving communication complexity in cryptographic protocols. One direction towards this goal is scalable cryptography: In many cryptographic schemes currently deployed, the security degrades linearly with the number of instances (e.g. encrypted messages) in the system. As this number can be huge in contexts like cloud computing, the parameters of the scheme have to be chosen considerably larger - and in particular depending on the expected number of instances in the system - to maintain security guarantees. We advance the state-of-the-art regarding scalable cryptography by constructing schemes where the security guarantees are independent of the number of instances. This allows to choose smaller parameters, even when the expected number of instances is immense. - We construct the first scalable encryption scheme with security against active adversaries which has both compact public keys and ciphertexts. In particular, we significantly reduce the size of the public key to only about 3% of the key-size of the previously most efficient scalable encryption scheme. (Gay,Hofheinz, and Kohl, CRYPTO, 2017) - We present a scalable structure-preserving signature scheme which improves both in terms of public-key and signature size compared to the previously best construction to about 40% and 56% of the sizes, respectively. (Gay, Hofheinz, Kohl, and Pan, EUROCRYPT, 2018) Another important area of cryptography is secure multi-party computation, where the goal is to jointly evaluate some function while keeping each party’s input private. In traditional approaches towards secure multi-party computation either the communication complexity scales linearly in the size of the function, or the computational efficiency is poor. To overcome this issue, Boyle, Gilboa, and Ishai (CRYPTO, 2016) introduced the notion of homomorphic secret sharing. Here, inputs are shared between parties such that each party does not learn anything about the input, and such that the parties can locally evaluate functions on the shares. Homomorphic secret sharing implies secure computation where the communication complexity only depends on the size of the inputs, which is typically much smaller than the size of the function. A different approach towards efficient secure computation is to split the protocol into an input-independent preprocessing phase, where long correlated strings are generated, and a very efficient online phase. One example for a useful correlation are authenticated Beaver triples, which allow to perform efficient multiplications in the online phase such that privacy of the inputs is preserved and parties deviating the protocol can be detected. The currently most efficient protocols implementing the preprocessing phase require communication linear in the number of triples to be generated. This results typically in high communication costs, as the online phase requires at least one authenticated Beaver triple per multiplication. We advance the state-of-the art regarding efficient protocols for secure computation with low communication complexity as follows. - We construct the first homomorphic secret sharing scheme for computing arbitrary functions in NC 1 (that is, functions that are computably by circuits with logarithmic depth) which supports message spaces of arbitrary size, has only negligible correctness error, and does not require expensive multiplication on ciphertexts. (Boyle, Kohl, and Scholl, EUROCRYPT, 2019) - We introduce the notion of a pseudorandom correlation generator for general correlations. Pseudorandom correlation generators allow to locally extend short correlated seeds into long pseudorandom correlated strings. We show that pseudorandom correlation generators can replace the preprocessing phase in many protocols, leading to a preprocessing phase with sublinear communication complexity. We show connections to homomorphic secret sharing schemes and give the first instantiation of pseudorandom correlation generators for authenticated Beaver triples at reasonable computational efficiency. (Boyle, Couteau, Gilboa, Ishai, Kohl, and Scholl, CRYPTO, 2019

On Tightly Secure Primitives in the Multi-Instance Setting

We initiate the study of general tight reductions in cryptography. There already exist a variety of works that offer tight reductions for a number of cryptographic tasks, ranging from encryption and signature schemes to proof systems. However, our work is the first to provide a universal definition of a tight reduction (for arbitrary primitives), along with several observations and results concerning primitives for which tight reductions have not been known. Technically, we start from the general notion of reductions due to Reingold, Trevisan, and Vadhan (TCC 2004), and equip it with a quantification of the respective reduction loss, and a canonical multi-instance extension to primitives. We then revisit several standard reductions whose tight security has not yet been considered. For instance, we revisit a generic construction of signature schemes from one-way functions, and show how to tighten the corresponding reduction by assuming collision-resistance from the used one-way function. We also obtain tightly secure pseudorandom generators (by using suitable rerandomisable hard-core predicates), and tightly secure lossy trapdoor functions

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

Identity-based Encryption Tightly Secure under Chosen-ciphertext Attacks

We propose the first identity-based encryption (IBE) scheme that is (almost) tightly secure against chosen-ciphertext attacks. Our scheme is efficient, in the sense that its ciphertext overhead is only seven group elements, three group elements more than that of the state-of-the-art passively (almost) tightly secure IBE scheme. Our scheme is secure in a multi-challenge setting, i.e., in face of an arbitrary number of challenge ciphertexts. The security of our scheme is based upon the standard symmetric external Diffie-Hellman assumption in pairing-friendly groups, but we also consider (less efficient) generalizations under weaker assumptions

Advances in Functional Encryption

Functional encryption is a novel paradigm for public-key encryption that enables both fine-grained access control and selective computation on encrypted data, as is necessary to protect big, complex data in the cloud. In this thesis, I provide a brief introduction to functional encryption, and an overview of my contributions to the area

Compactly Hiding Linear Spans: Tightly Secure Constant-Size Simulation-Sound QA-NIZK Proofs and Applications

International audienceQuasi-adaptive non-interactive zero-knowledge (QA-NIZK) proofs is a powerful paradigm, suggested recently by Jutla and Roy (Asiacrypt '13), which is motivated by the Groth-Sahai seminal techniques for efficient non-interactive zero-knowledge (NIZK) proofs. In this paradigm, the common reference string may depend on specific language parameters, a fact that allows much shorter proofs in important cases. It even makes certain standard model applications competitive with the Fiat-Shamir heuristic in the Random Oracle idealization (such QA-NIZK proofs were recently optimized to constant size by Jutla and Roy (Crypto '14) and Libert et al. (Eurocrypt '14) for the important case of proving that a vector of group elements belongs to a linear subspace). While, e.g., the QA-NIZK arguments of Libert et al. provide unbounded simulation-soundness and constant proof length, their simulation-soundness is only loosely related to the underlying assumption (with a gap proportional to the number of adversarial queries) and it is unknown how to alleviate this limitation without sacrificing efficiency. Here, we deal with the basic question of whether and to what extent we can simultaneously optimize the proof size and the tightness of security reductions, allowing for important applications with tight security (which are typically to date quite lengthy) to be of shorter size. In this paper, we resolve this question by describing a novel simulation-sound QA-NIZK argument showing that a vector v ∈ G n belongs to a subspace of rank t < n using a constant number of group elements. Unlike previous constant-size QA-NIZK proofs of such statements, the unbounded simulation-soundness of our system is nearly tightly related (i.e., the reduction only loses a factor proportional to the security parameter) to the standard Decision Linear assumption. To show simulation-soundness in the constrained context of tight reductions, we employ a number of techniques, and explicitly point at a technique – which may be of independent interest – of hiding the linear span of a structure-preserving homomorphic signature (which is part of an OR proof). As an application, we design a public-key cryptosystem with almost tight CCA2-security in the multi-challenge, multiuser setting with improved length (asymptotically optimal for long messages). We also adapt our scheme to provide CCA security in the key-dependent message scenario (KDM-CCA2) with ciphertext length reduced by 75% when compared to the best known tightly secure KDM-CCA2 system so far

Tight Leakage-Resilient CCA-Security from Quasi-Adaptive Hash Proof System

We propose the concept of quasi-adaptive hash proof system (QAHPS), where the projection key is allowed to depend on the specific language for which hash values are computed. We formalize leakage-resilient(LR)-ardency for QAHPS by defining two statistical properties, including LR--universal and LR--key-switching. We provide a generic approach to tightly leakage-resilient CCA (LR-CCA) secure public-key encryption (PKE) from LR-ardent QAHPS. Our approach is reminiscent of the seminal work of Cramer and Shoup (Eurocrypt\u2702), and employ three QAHPS schemes, one for generating a uniform string to hide the plaintext, and the other two for proving the well-formedness of the ciphertext. The LR-ardency of QAHPS makes possible the tight LR-CCA security. We give instantiations based on the standard k-Linear (k-LIN) assumptions over asymmetric and symmetric pairing groups, respectively, and obtain fully compact PKE with tight LR-CCA security. The security loss is O(log Q_e) where Q_e denotes the number of encryption queries. Specifically, our tightly LR-CCA secure PKE instantiation from SXDH has only 4 group elements in the public key and 7 group elements in the ciphertext, thus is the most efficient one

Improvements and New Constructions of Digital Signatures

Ein digitales Signaturverfahren, oft auch nur digitale Signatur genannt, ist ein wichtiger und nicht mehr wegzudenkender Baustein in der Kryptographie. Es stellt das digitale Äquivalent zur klassischen handschriftlichen Signatur dar und liefert darüber hinaus noch weitere wünschenswerte Eigenschaften. Mit solch einem Verfahren kann man einen öffentlichen und einen geheimen Schlüssel erzeugen. Der geheime Schlüssel dient zur Erstellung von Signaturen zu beliebigen Nachrichten. Diese können mit Hilfe des öffentlichen Schlüssels von jedem überprüft und somit verifiziert werden. Desweiteren fordert man, dass das Verfahren "sicher" sein soll. Dazu gibt es in der Literatur viele verschiedene Begriffe und Definitionen, je nachdem welche konkreten Vorstellungen beziehungsweise Anwendungsgebiete man hat. Vereinfacht gesagt, sollte es für einen Angreifer ohne Kenntnis des geheimen Schlüssels nicht möglich sein eine gültige Signatur zu einer beliebigen Nachricht zu fälschen. Ein sicheres Signaturverfahren kann somit verwendet werden um die folgenden Ziele zu realisieren: - Authentizität: Jeder Empfänger kann überprüfen, ob die Nachricht von einem bestimmten Absender kommt. - Integrität der Nachricht: Jeder Empfänger kann feststellen, ob die Nachricht bei der Übertragung verändert wurde. - Nicht-Abstreitbarkeit: Der Absender kann nicht abstreiten die Signatur erstellt zu haben. Damit ist der Einsatz von digitalen Signaturen für viele Anwendungen in der Praxis sehr wichtig. Überall da, wo es wichtig ist die Authentizität und Integrität einer Nachricht sicherzustellen, wie beim elektronischen Zahlungsverkehr, Softwareupdates oder digitalen Zertifikaten im Internet, kommen digitale Signaturen zum Einsatz. Aber auch für die kryptographische Theorie sind digitale Signaturen ein unverzichtbares Hilfsmittel. Sie ermöglichen zum Beispiel die Konstruktion von stark sicheren Verschlüsselungsverfahren. Eigener Beitrag: Wie bereits erwähnt gibt es unterschiedliche Sicherheitsbegriffe im Rahmen von digitalen Signaturen. Ein Standardbegriff von Sicherheit, der eine recht starke Form von Sicherheit beschreibt, wird in dieser Arbeit näher betrachtet. Die Konstruktion von Verfahren, die diese Form der Sicherheit erfüllen, ist ein vielschichtiges Forschungsthema. Dazu existieren unterschiedliche Strategien in unterschiedlichen Modellen. In dieser Arbeit konzentrieren wir uns daher auf folgende Punkte. - Ausgehend von vergleichsweise realistischen Annahmen konstruieren wir ein stark sicheres Signaturverfahren im sogenannten Standardmodell, welches das realistischste Modell für Sicherheitsbeweise darstellt. Unser Verfahren ist das bis dahin effizienteste Verfahren in seiner Kategorie. Es erstellt sehr kurze Signaturen und verwendet kurze Schlüssel, beides unverzichtbar für die Praxis. - Wir verbessern die Qualität eines Sicherheitsbeweises von einem verwandten Baustein, der identitätsbasierten Verschlüsselung. Dies hat unter anderem Auswirkung auf dessen Effizienz bezüglich der empfohlenen Schlüssellängen für den sicheren Einsatz in der Praxis. Da jedes identitätsbasierte Verschlüsselungsverfahren generisch in ein digitales Signaturverfahren umgewandelt werden kann ist dies auch im Kontext digitaler Signaturen interessant. - Wir betrachten Varianten von digitalen Signaturen mit zusätzlichen Eigenschaften, sogenannte aggregierbare Signaturverfahren. Diese ermöglichen es mehrere Signaturen effizient zu einer zusammenzufassen und dabei trotzdem alle zugehörigen verschiedenen Nachrichten zu verifizieren. Wir geben eine neue Konstruktion von solch einem aggregierbaren Signaturverfahren an, bei der das Verfahren eine Liste aller korrekt signierten Nachrichten in einer aggregierten Signatur ausgibt anstatt, wie bisher üblich, nur gültig oder ungültig. Wenn eine aggregierte Signatur aus vielen Einzelsignaturen besteht wird somit das erneute Berechnen und eventuell erneute Senden hinfällig und dadurch der Aufwand erheblich reduziert

Almost Tightly-Secure Re-Randomizable and Replayable CCA-secure Public Key Encryption

Re-randomizable Replayable CCA-secure public key encryption (Rand-RCCA PKE) schemes guarantee security against chosen-ciphertext attacks while ensuring the useful property of re-randomizable ciphertexts. We introduce the notion of multi-user and multi-ciphertext Rand-RCCA PKE and we give the first construction of such a PKE scheme with an almost tight security reduction to a standard assumption. Our construction is structure preserving and can be instantiated over Type-1 pairing groups. Technically, our work borrows ideas from the state of the art Rand-RCCA PKE scheme of Faonio et al. (ASIACRYPT’19) and the adaptive partitioning technique of Hofheinz (EUROCRYPT’17). Additionally, we show (1) how to turn our scheme into a publicly-verifiable (pv) Rand-RCCA scheme and (2) that plugging our pv-Rand-RCCA PKE scheme into the MixNet protocol of Faonio et al. we can obtain the first almost tightly-secure MixNet protocol

Hybrid Encryption in a Multi-user Setting, Revisited

This paper contributes to understanding the interplay of security notions for PKE, KEMs, and DEMs, in settings with multiple users, challenges, and instances. We start analytically by first studying (a) the tightness aspects of the standard hybrid KEM+DEM encryption paradigm, (b) the inherent weak security properties of all deterministic DEMs due to generic key-collision attacks in the multi-instance setting, and (c) the negative effect of deterministic DEMs on the security of hybrid encryption. We then switch to the constructive side by (d) introducing the concept of an augmented data encapsulation mechanism (ADEM) that promises robustness against multi-instance attacks, (e) proposing a variant of hybrid encryption that uses an ADEM instead of a DEM to alleviate the problems of the standard KEM+DEM composition, and (f) constructing practical ADEMs that are secure in the multi-instance setting