On Structural Signatures for Tree Data Structures

Abstract. In this paper, we present new attacks on the redactable signature scheme introduced by Kundu and Bertino at VLDB '08. This extends the work done by Brzuska et al. at ACNS '10 and Samelin et al. at ISPEC '12. The attacks address unforgeability, transparency and privacy. Based on the ideas of Kundu and Bertino, we introduce a new provably secure construction. The corresponding security model is more flexible than the one introduced by Brzuska et al. Moreover, we have implemented schemes introduced by Brzuska et al. and Kundu and Bertino. The evaluation shows that schemes with a quadratic complexity become unuseable very fast

A General Framework for Redactable Signatures and New Constructions

A redactable signature scheme (RSS) allows removing parts of a signed message by any party without invalidating the respective signature. State-of-the-art constructions thereby focus on messages represented by one specific data structure, e.g., lists, sets or trees, and adjust the security model accordingly. To overcome the necessity for this myriad of models, we present a general framework covering arbitrary data-structures and even more sophisticated possibilities. For example, we cover fixed elements which must not be redactable and dependencies between elements. Moreover, we introduce the notion of designated redactors, i.e., the signer can give some extra information to selected entities which become redactors. In practice, this often allows to obtain more efficient schemes. We then present two RSSs; one for sets and one for lists, both constructed from any EUF-CMA secure signature scheme and indistinguishable cryptographic accumulators in a black-box way and show how the concept of designated redactors can be used to increase the efficiency of these schemes. Finally, we present a black-box construction of a designated redactor RSS by combining an RSS for sets with non-interactive zero knowledge proof systems. All the three constructions presented in this paper provide transparency, which is an important property, but quite hard to achieve, as we also conceal the length of the original message and the positions of the redactions

Redactable Signature Schemes and Zero-knowledge Proofs: A comparative examination for applications in Decentralized Digital Identity Systems

Redactable Signature Schemes and Zero-Knowledge Proofs are two radically different approaches to enable privacy. This paper analyses their merits and drawbacks when applied to decentralized identity system. Redactable Signatures, though competitively quick and compact, are not as expressive as zero-knowledge proofs and do not provide the same level of privacy. On the other hand, zero-knowledge proofs can be much faster but some protocols require a trusted set-up. We conclude that given the benefits and drawbacks, redactable signatures are more appropriate at an earlier stage and zero-knowledge proofs are more appropriate at a later stage for decentralized identity systemsComment: 9 Pages, Trustworthy digital identity international conference 202

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

A Patient-centric, Attribute-based, Source-verifiable Framework for Health Record Sharing

The storage of health records in electronic format, and the wide-spread sharing of these records among different health care providers, have enormous potential benefits to the U.S. healthcare system. These benefits include both improving the quality of health care delivered to patients and reducing the costs of delivering that care. However, maintaining the security of electronic health record systems and the privacy of the information they contain is paramount to ensure that patients have confidence in the use of such systems. In this paper, we propose a framework for electronic health record sharing that is patient centric, i.e. it provides patients with substantial control over how their information is shared and with whom; provides for verifiability of original sources of health information and the integrity of the data; and permits fine-grained decisions about when data can be shared based on the use of attribute-based techniques for authorization and access control. We present the architecture of the framework, describe a prototype system we have built based on it, and demonstrate its use within a scenario involving emergency responders' access to health record information

New approaches to privacy preserving signatures

In this thesis we advance the theory and practice of privacy preserving digital signatures. Privacy preserving signatures such as group and ring signatures enable signers to hide in groups of potential signers. We design a cryptographic primitive called signatures with flexible public keys, which allows for modular construction of privacy preserving signatures. Its core is an equivalence relation between verification keys, such that key representatives can be transformed in their class to obscures their origin. The resulting constructions are more efficient than the state of the art, under the same or weaker assumptions. We show an extension of the security model of fully dynamic group signatures, which are those where members may join and leave the group over time. Our contribution here, which is facilitated by the new primitive, is the treatment of membership status as potentially sensitive information. In the theory of ring signatures, we show a construction of ring signatures which is the first in the literature with logarithmic signature size in the size of the ring without any trusted setup or reliance on non-standard assumptions. We show how to extend our techniques to the derived setting of linkable ring signatures, where different signatures of the same origin may be publicly linked. Here, we further revisit the notion of linkable anonymity, offering a significant strengthening compared to previous definitions.Diese Arbeit treibt die Theorie und Praxis der privatsphärewahrenden digitalen Signa- turen voran. Privatsphärewahrende Signaturen, wie Gruppen- oder Ringsignaturen erlauben es Zeichnern sich in einer Gruppe potenzieller Zeichner zu verstecken. Wir entwerfen mit Signatures with Flexible Public Keys einen kryptografischen Baustein zur modularen Konstruktion von privatsphärewahrenden Signaturen. Dessen Kern ist eine Äquivalenzrelation zwischen den Schlüsseln, sodass ein Schlüsselvertreter in seiner Klasse bewegt werden kann, um seinen Ursprung zu verschleiern. Darauf auf- bauende Konstruktionen sind effizienter als der Stand der Technik, unter gleichen oder schwächeren Annahmen. Wir erweitern das Sicherheitsmodell vollständig dynami- scher Gruppensignaturen, die es Mitgliedern erlauben der Gruppe beizutreten oder sie zu verlassen: Durch das neue Primitiv, wird die Behandlung der Mitgliedschaft als potenziell sensibel ermöglicht. In der Theorie der Ringsignaturen geben wir die erste Konstruktion, welche über eine logarithmische Signaturgröße verfügt, ohne auf eine Vorkonfiguration oder unübliche Annahmen vertrauen zu müssen. Wir übertragen unsere Ergebnisse auf das Feld der verknüpfbaren Ringsignaturen, die eine öffentliche Verknüpfung von zeichnergleichen Signaturen ermöglichen. Unsere Neubetrachtung des Begriffs der verknüpfbaren Anonymität führt zu einer signifikanten Stärkung im Vergleich zu früheren Definitionen

Leveled Fully Homomorphic Signatures from Standard Lattices

In a homomorphic signature scheme, a user Alice signs some large data $x$ using her secret signing key and stores the signed data on a server. The server can then run some computation $y=g(x)$ on the signed data and homomorphically produce a short signature $\sigma$. Anybody can verify the signature using Alice\u27s public verification key and become convinced that $y$ is the correct output of the computation $g$ over Alice\u27s data, without needing to have the underlying data itself. In this work, we construct the first leveled fully homomorphic signature schemes that can evaluate arbitrary circuits over signed data, where only the maximal depth $d$ of the circuit needs to be fixed a priori. The size of the evaluated signature grows polynomially in $d$, but is otherwise independent of the circuit size or the data size. Our solutions are based on the hardness of the small integer solution (SIS) problem, which is in turn implied by the worst-case hardness of problems in standard lattices. We get a scheme in the standard model, albeit with large public parameters whose size must exceed the total size of all signed data. In the random-oracle model, we get a scheme with short public parameters. These results offer a significant improvement in capabilities and assumptions over the best prior homomorphic signature scheme due to Boneh and Freeman (Eurocrypt \u2711). As a building block of independent interest, we introduce a new notion called homomorphic trapdoor functions (HTDF). We show to how construct homomorphic signatures using HTDFs as a black box. We construct HTDFs based on the SIS problem by relying on a recent technique developed by Boneh et al. (Eurocrypt \u2714) in the context of attribute based encryption

Aggregate Signatures with Versatile Randomization and Issuer-Hiding Multi-Authority Anonymous Credentials

Anonymous credentials (AC) have emerged as a promising privacy-preserving solu- tion for user-centric identity management. They allow users to authenticate in an anonymous and unlinkable way such that only required information (i.e., attributes) from their credentials are re- vealed. With the increasing push towards decentralized systems and identity, e.g., self-sovereign identity (SSI) and the concept of verifiable credentials, this also necessitates the need for suit- able AC systems. For instance, when relying on existing AC systems, obtaining credentials from different issuers requires the presentation of independent credentials, which can become cum- bersome. Consequently, it is desirable for AC systems to support the so-called multi-authority (MA) feature. It allows a compact and efficient showing of multiple credentials from different is- suers. Another important property is called issuer hiding (IH). This means that showing a set of credentials is not revealed which issuer has issued which credentials but only whether a verifier- defined policy on the acceptable set of issuers is satisfied. This issue becomes particularly acute in the context of MA, where a user could be uniquely identified by the combination of issuers in their showing. Unfortunately, there are no AC schemes that satisfy both these properties simul- taneously. To close this gap, we introduce the concept of Issuer-Hiding Multi-Authority Anonymous Cre- dentials (IhMA). Our proposed solution involves the development of two new signature primi- tives with versatile randomization features which are independent of interest: 1) Aggregate Sig- natures with Randomizable Tags and Public Keys (AtoSa) and 2) Aggregate Mercurial Signatures (ATMS), which extend the functionality of AtoSa to additionally support the randomization of messages and yield the first instance of an aggregate (equivalence-class) structure-preserving sig- nature. These primitives can be elegantly used to obtain IhMA with different trade-offs but have applications beyond. We formalize all notations and provide rigorous security definitions for our proposed primi- tives. We present provably secure and efficient instantiations of the two primitives as well as corresponding IhMA systems. Finally, we provide benchmarks based on an implementation to demonstrate the practical efficiency of our construction

Challenges in Cybersecurity and Privacy - the European Research Landscape

Cybersecurity and Privacy issues are becoming an important barrier for a trusted and dependable global digital society development. Cyber-criminals are continuously shifting their cyber-attacks specially against cyber-physical systems and IoT, since they present additional vulnerabilities due to their constrained capabilities, their unattended nature and the usage of potential untrustworthiness components. Likewise, identity-theft, fraud, personal data leakages, and other related cyber-crimes are continuously evolving, causing important damages and privacy problems for European citizens in both virtual and physical scenarios. In this context, new holistic approaches, methodologies, techniques and tools are needed to cope with those issues, and mitigate cyberattacks, by employing novel cyber-situational awareness frameworks, risk analysis and modeling, threat intelligent systems, cyber-threat information sharing methods, advanced big-data analysis techniques as well as exploiting the benefits from latest technologies such as SDN/NFV and Cloud systems. In addition, novel privacy-preserving techniques, and crypto-privacy mechanisms, identity and eID management systems, trust services, and recommendations are needed to protect citizens’ privacy while keeping usability levels. The European Commission is addressing the challenge through different means, including the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program, thereby financing innovative projects that can cope with the increasing cyberthreat landscape. This book introduces several cybersecurity and privacy research challenges and how they are being addressed in the scope of 15 European research projects. Each chapter is dedicated to a different funded European Research project, which aims to cope with digital security and privacy aspects, risks, threats and cybersecurity issues from a different perspective. Each chapter includes the project’s overviews and objectives, the particular challenges they are covering, research achievements on security and privacy, as well as the techniques, outcomes, and evaluations accomplished in the scope of the EU project. The book is the result of a collaborative effort among relative ongoing European Research projects in the field of privacy and security as well as related cybersecurity fields, and it is intended to explain how these projects meet the main cybersecurity and privacy challenges faced in Europe. Namely, the EU projects analyzed in the book are: ANASTACIA, SAINT, YAKSHA, FORTIKA, CYBECO, SISSDEN, CIPSEC, CS-AWARE. RED-Alert, Truessec.eu. ARIES, LIGHTest, CREDENTIAL, FutureTrust, LEPS. Challenges in Cybersecurity and Privacy - the European Research Landscape is ideal for personnel in computer/communication industries as well as academic staff and master/research students in computer science and communications networks interested in learning about cyber-security and privacy aspects

ZEBRA: SNARK-based Anonymous Credentials for Practical, Private and Accountable On-chain Access Control

Restricting access to certified users is not only desirable for many blockchain applications, it is also legally mandated for decentralized finance (DeFi) applications to counter malicious actors. Existing solutions, however, are either (i) non-private, i.e., they reveal the link between users and their wallets to the authority granting credentials, or (ii) they introduce additional trust assumptions by relying on a decentralized oracle to verify anonymous credentials (ACs). To remove additional trust in the latter approach, we propose verifying credentials on-chain in this work. We find that this approach has impractical costs with prior AC schemes, and propose a new AC scheme ZEBRA that crucially relies on zkSNARKs to provide efficient on-chain verification for the first time. In addition to the standard unlinkability property that provides privacy for users, ZEBRA also supports auditability, revocation, traceability, and theft detection, which adds accountability for malicious users and convenience for honest users to our access control solution. Even with these properties, ZEBRA reduces the gas cost incurred on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) by 14.3x when compared to Coconut [NDSS 2019], the state-of-the-art AC scheme for blockchains that only provides unlinkability. This improvement translates to a reduction in transaction fees from 176 USD to 12 USD on Ethereum in May 2023. Since 12 USD is still high for most applications, ZEBRA further drives down credential verification costs through batched verification. For a batch of 512 layer-1 and layer-2 wallets, the transaction fee on Ethereum is reduced to just 0.44 USD and 0.02 USD, respectively, which is comparable to the minimum transaction costs on Ethereum