Deterring Certificate Subversion: Efficient Double-Authentication-Preventing Signatures

This paper presents highly efficient designs of double authentication preventing signatures (DAPS). In a DAPS, signing two messages with the same first part and differing second parts reveals the signing key. In the context of PKIs we suggest that CAs who use DAPS to create certificates have a court-convincing argument to deny big-brother requests to create rogue certificates, thus deterring certificate subversion. We give two general methods for obtaining DAPS. Both start from trapdoor identification schemes. We instantiate our transforms to obtain numerous specific DAPS that, in addition to being efficient, are proven with tight security reductions to standard assumptions. We implement our DAPS schemes to show that they are not only several orders of magnitude more efficient than prior DAPS but competitive with in-use signature schemes that lack the double authentication preventing property

Short Double- and N-Times-Authentication-Preventing Signatures from ECDSA and More

Double-authentication-preventing signatures (DAPS) are signatures designed with the aim that signing two messages with an identical first part (called address) but different second parts (called payload) allows to publicly extract the secret signing key from two such signatures. A prime application for DAPS is disincentivizing and/or penalizing the creation of two signatures on different payloads within the same address, such as penalizing double spending of transactions in Bitcoin by the loss of the double spender\u27s money. So far DAPS have been constructed from very specific signature schemes not used in practice and using existing techniques it has proved elusive to construct DAPS schemes from signatures widely used in practice. This, unfortunately, has prevented practical adoption of this interesting tool so far. In this paper we ask whether one can construct DAPS from signature schemes used in practice. We affirmatively answer this question by presenting novel techniques to generically construct provably secure DAPS from a large class of discrete logarithm based signatures. This class includes schemes like Schnorr, DSA, EdDSA, and, most interestingly for practical applications, the widely used ECDSA signature scheme. The resulting DAPS are highly efficient and the shortest among all existing DAPS schemes. They are nearly half of the size of the most efficient factoring based schemes (IACR PKC\u2717) and improve by a factor of 100 over the most efficient discrete logarithm based ones (ACM CCS\u2715). Although this efficiency comes at the cost of a reduced address space, i.e., size of keys linear in the number of addresses, we will show that this is not a limitation in practice. Moreover, we generalize DAPS to any N>2, which we denote as N-times-authentication-preventing signatures (NAPS). Finally, we also provide an integration of our ECDSA-based DAPS into the OpenSSL library and perform an extensive comparison with existing approaches

Post-quantum blockchain for internet of things domain

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonIn the evolving realm of quantum computing, emerging advancements reveal substantial challenges and threats to existing cryptographic infrastructures, particularly impacting blockchain technologies. These are pivotal for securing the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems. The traditional blockchain structures, integral to myriad IoT applications, are susceptible to potential quantum computations, emphasizing an urgent need for innovations in post-quantum blockchain solutions to reinforce security in the expansive domain of IoT. This PhD thesis delves into the crucial exploration and meticulous examination of the development and implementation of post-quantum blockchain within the IoT landscape, focusing on the incorporation of advanced post-quantum cryptographic algorithms in Hyperledger Fabric, a forefront blockchain platform renowned for its versatility and robustness. The primary aim is to discern viable post-quantum cryptographic solutions capable of fortifying blockchain systems against impending quantum threats enhancing security and reliability in IoT applications. The research comprehensively evaluates various post-quantum public-key generation and digital signature algorithms, performing detailed analyses of their computational time and memory usage to identify optimal candidates. Furthermore, the thesis proposes an innovative lattice-based digital signature scheme Fast-Fourier Lattice-based Compact Signature over NTRU (Falcon), which leverages the Monte Carlo Markov Chain (MCMC) algorithm as a trapdoor sampler to augment its security attributes. The research introduces a post-quantum version of the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain that integrates post-quantum signatures. The system utilizes the Open Quantum Safe (OQS) library, rigorously tested against NIST round 3 candidates for optimal performance. The study highlights the capability to manage IoT data securely on the post-quantum Hyperledger Fabric blockchain through the Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol. Such a configuration ensures safe data transfer from IoT sensors directly to the blockchain nodes, securing the processing and recording of sensor data within the node ledger. The research addresses the multifaceted challenges of quantum computing advancements and significantly contributes to establishing secure, efficient, and resilient post-quantum blockchain infrastructures tailored explicitly for the IoT domain. These findings are instrumental in elevating the security paradigms of IoT systems against quantum vulnerabilities and catalysing innovations in post-quantum cryptography and blockchain technologies. Furthermore, this thesis introduces strategies for the optimization of performance and scalability of post-quantum blockchain solutions and explores alternative, energy-efficient consensus mechanisms such as the Raft and Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP), providing sustainable alternatives to the conventional Proof-of-Work (PoW) approach. A critical insight emphasized throughout this thesis is the imperative of synergistic collaboration among academia, industry, and regulatory bodies. This collaboration is pivotal to expedite the adoption and standardization of post-quantum blockchain solutions, fostering the development of interoperable and standardized technologies enriched with robust security and privacy frameworks for end users. In conclusion, this thesis furnishes profound insights and substantial contributions to implementing post-quantum blockchain in the IoT domain. It delineates original contributions to the knowledge and practices in the field, offering practical solutions and advancing the state-of-the-art in post-quantum cryptography and blockchain research, thereby paving the way for a secure and resilient future for interconnected IoT systems

Software Protection and Secure Authentication for Autonomous Vehicular Cloud Computing

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing every technology we deal with. Autonomy has been a sought-after goal in vehicles, and now more than ever we are very close to that goal. Vehicles before were dumb mechanical devices, now they are becoming smart, computerized, and connected coined as Autonomous Vehicles (AVs). Moreover, researchers found a way to make more use of these enormous capabilities and introduced Autonomous Vehicles Cloud Computing (AVCC). In these platforms, vehicles can lend their unused resources and sensory data to join AVCC. In this dissertation, we investigate security and privacy issues in AVCC. As background, we built our vision of a layer-based approach to thoroughly study state-of-the-art literature in the realm of AVs. Particularly, we examined some cyber-attacks and compared their promising mitigation strategies from our perspective. Then, we focused on two security issues involving AVCC: software protection and authentication. For the first problem, our concern is protecting client’s programs executed on remote AVCC resources. Such a usage scenario is susceptible to information leakage and reverse-engineering. Hence, we proposed compiler-based obfuscation techniques. What distinguishes our techniques, is that they are generic and software-based and utilize the intermediate representation, hence, they are platform agnostic, hardware independent and support different high level programming languages. Our results demonstrate that the control-flow of obfuscated code versions are more complicated making it unintelligible for timing side-channels. For the second problem, we focus on protecting AVCC from unauthorized access or intrusions, which may cause misuse or service disruptions. Therefore, we propose a strong privacy-aware authentication technique for users accessing AVCC services or vehicle sharing their resources with the AVCC. Our technique modifies robust function encryption, which protects stakeholder’s confidentiality and withstands linkability and “known-ciphertexts” attacks. Thus, we utilize an authentication server to search and match encrypted data by performing dot product operations. Additionally, we developed another lightweight technique, based on KNN algorithm, to authenticate vehicles at computationally limited charging stations using its owner’s encrypted iris data. Our security and privacy analysis proved that our schemes achieved privacy-preservation goals. Our experimental results showed that our schemes have reasonable computation and communications overheads and efficiently scalable

Generic Double-Authentication Preventing Signatures and a Post-Quantum Instantiation

Double-authentication preventing signatures (DAPS) are a variant of digital signatures which have received considerable attention recently (Derler et al. EuroS&P 2018, Poettering AfricaCrypt 2018). They are unforgeable signatures in the usual sense and sign messages that are composed of an address and a payload. Their distinguishing feature is the property that signing two different payloads with respect to the same address allows to publicly extract the secret signing key from two such signatures. DAPS are known in the factoring, the discrete logarithm and the lattice setting. The majority of the constructions are ad-hoc. Only recently, Derler et al. (EuroS&P 2018) presented the first generic construction that allows to extend any discrete logarithm based secure signatures scheme to DAPS. However, their scheme has the drawback that the number of potential addresses (the address space) used for signing is polynomially bounded (and in fact small) as the size of secret and the public keys of the resulting DAPS are linear in the address space. In this paper we overcome this limitation and present a generic construction of DAPS with constant size keys and signatures. Our techniques are not tailored to a specific algebraic setting and in particular allow us to construct the first DAPS without structured hardness assumptions, i.e., from symmetric key primitives, yielding a candidate for post-quantum secure DAPS

Spontaneous anonymous group cryptography and its applications.

Fung Kar-Yin.Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2004.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 72-81).Abstracts in English and Chinese.Abstract --- p.iAcknowledgement --- p.iiiChapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1Chapter 1.1 --- Development of Cryptography --- p.1Chapter 1.2 --- Group Cryptography --- p.3Chapter 1.3 --- Spontaneous Anonymous Group Signature --- p.4Chapter 1.4 --- Blind Signature --- p.5Chapter 1.5 --- Blind SAG Signature --- p.6Chapter 1.6 --- Organization of This Thesis --- p.6Chapter 2 --- Background Study --- p.7Chapter 2.1 --- Six Primitives in Cryptography --- p.7Chapter 2.1.1 --- Symmetric Encryption --- p.8Chapter 2.1.2 --- Asymmetric Encryption --- p.8Chapter 2.1.3 --- Digital Signature --- p.9Chapter 2.1.4 --- Hash Function --- p.9Chapter 2.1.5 --- Digital Certificate --- p.10Chapter 2.1.6 --- Proof of Knowledge --- p.10Chapter 2.2 --- Euler Totient Function --- p.11Chapter 2.3 --- One-Way Function --- p.12Chapter 2.3.1 --- One-Way Trapdoor Function --- p.13Chapter 2.3.2 --- Discrete Logarithm Problem --- p.13Chapter 2.3.3 --- RSA Problem --- p.14Chapter 2.3.4 --- Integer Factorization Problem --- p.15Chapter 2.3.5 --- Quadratic Residuosity Problem --- p.15Chapter 2.3.6 --- Schnorr's ROS assumption --- p.16Chapter 2.4 --- Bilinear Pairing --- p.16Chapter 2.4.1 --- Weil Pairing --- p.18Chapter 2.4.2 --- Tate Pairing --- p.18Chapter 2.5 --- Gap Diffie-Hellman Group --- p.19Chapter 2.5.1 --- GDH --- p.19Chapter 2.5.2 --- Co-GDH --- p.20Chapter 2.6 --- Random Oracle Model --- p.21Chapter 2.6.1 --- Random Permutation --- p.23Chapter 2.6.2 --- Lunchtime Attack --- p.23Chapter 2.6.3 --- Back Patch --- p.23Chapter 2.6.4 --- Rewind Simulation --- p.24Chapter 2.7 --- Generic Group Model --- p.24Chapter 3 --- Digital and Threshold Signatures --- p.26Chapter 3.1 --- Introduction --- p.26Chapter 3.2 --- Notion of Attacks and Security in Signature --- p.28Chapter 3.2.1 --- Types of Signatures --- p.29Chapter 3.3 --- Threshold Signature --- p.31Chapter 3.4 --- Properties in Threshold Signatures --- p.31Chapter 4 --- Blind Signature --- p.33Chapter 4.1 --- Introduction --- p.33Chapter 4.1.1 --- Security Requirements --- p.35Chapter 4.2 --- Transferred Proof of Knowledge --- p.36Chapter 4.3 --- RSA Based Schemes --- p.37Chapter 4.3.1 --- Chaum's RSA Scheme --- p.37Chapter 4.3.2 --- Abe's RSA Scheme --- p.38Chapter 4.4 --- Discrete Logarithm Based Schemes --- p.39Chapter 4.4.1 --- Schnorr Blind Signature --- p.39Chapter 4.4.2 --- Okamoto-Schnorr Blind Signature --- p.40Chapter 4.5 --- Bilinear Mapping Based Schemes --- p.40Chapter 5 --- Spontaneous Anonymous Group Signature --- p.42Chapter 5.1 --- Introduction --- p.42Chapter 5.2 --- Cramer-Damgard-Schoemaker (CDS) SAG Signature --- p.44Chapter 5.2.1 --- (1´ةn)-CDS type SAG Signature --- p.44Chapter 5.2.2 --- "(t, n)-CDS type SAG Signature" --- p.45Chapter 5.3 --- Ring-type SAG Signature Schemes --- p.46Chapter 5.3.1 --- Rivest-Shamir-Tauman --- p.46Chapter 5.3.2 --- Abe's 1-out-of-n Ring Signature --- p.49Chapter 5.4 --- Discussions --- p.51Chapter 6 --- Blind SAG Signature --- p.53Chapter 6.1 --- Introduction --- p.53Chapter 6.2 --- Security Definitions --- p.54Chapter 6.2.1 --- Security Model --- p.55Chapter 6.3 --- "(1,n)-Ring Structured Blind SAG Signature" --- p.57Chapter 6.3.1 --- Signing Protocol --- p.58Chapter 6.3.2 --- Verification Algorithm --- p.58Chapter 6.4 --- CDS-type Blind SAG Signature --- p.59Chapter 6.4.1 --- "(l,n)-CDS-type" --- p.59Chapter 6.5 --- "(t,n)-CDS-type" --- p.60Chapter 6.5.1 --- Signing Protocol --- p.61Chapter 6.5.2 --- Verification Algorithm --- p.61Chapter 6.6 --- Security Analysis --- p.62Chapter 6.7 --- Applications to Credential System --- p.67Chapter 7 --- Conclusion --- p.69A --- p.71Bibliography --- p.8

Privacy Enhancing Protocols using Pairing Based Cryptography

This thesis presents privacy enhanced cryptographic constructions, consisting of formal definitions, algorithms and motivating applications. The contributions are a step towards the development of cryptosystems which, from the design phase, incorporate privacy as a primary goal. Privacy offers a form of protection over personal and other sensitive data to individuals, and has been the subject of much study in recent years. Our constructions are based on a special type of algebraic group called bilinear groups. We present existing cryptographic constructions which use bilinear pairings, namely Identity-Based Encryption (IBE). We define a desirable property of digital signatures, blindness, and present new IBE constructions which incorporate this property. Blindness is a desirable feature from a privacy perspective as it allows an individual to obscure elements such as personal details in the data it presents to a third party. In IBE, blinding focuses on obscuring elements of the identity string which an individual presents to the key generation centre. This protects an individual's privacy in a direct manner by allowing her to blind sensitive elements of the identity string and also prevents a key generation centre from subsequently producing decryption keys using her full identity string. Using blinding techniques, the key generation centre does not learn the full identity string. In this thesis, we study selected provably-secure cryptographic constructions. Our contribution is to reconsider the design of such constructions with a view to incorporating privacy. We present the new, privacy-enhanced cryptographic protocols using these constructions as primitives. We refine useful existing security notions and present feasible security definitions and proofs for these constructions