Public-Key Encryption with Delegated Search

In public-key setting, Alice encrypts email with public key of Bob, so that only Bob will be able to learn contents of email. Consider scenario when computer of Alice is infected and unbeknown to Alice it also embeds malware into message. Bob's company, Carol, cannot scan his email for malicious content as it is encrypted so burden is on Bob to do scan. This is not efficient. We construct mechanism that enables Bob to provide trapdoors to Carol such that Carol, given encrypted data and malware signature, is able to check whether encrypted data contains malware signature, without decrypting it. We refer to this mechanism as Public-Key Encryption with Delegated Search SPKE.\ud \ud We formalize SPKE and give construction based on ElGamal public-key encryption (PKE). proposed scheme has ciphertexts which are both searchable and decryptable. This property of scheme is crucial since entity can search entire content of message, in contrast to existing searchable public-key encryption schemes where search is done only in metadata part. We prove in standard model that scheme is ciphertext indistinguishable and trapdoor indistinguishable under Symmetric External Diffie-Hellman (sxdh) assumption. We prove also ciphertext one-wayness of scheme under modified Computational Diffie-Hellman (mcdh) assumption. We show that our PKEDS scheme can be used in different applications such as detecting encrypted malwares and forwarding encrypted emails

Execution Integrity with In-Place Encryption

Instruction set randomization (ISR) was initially proposed with the main goal of countering code-injection attacks. However, ISR seems to have lost its appeal since code-injection attacks became less attractive because protection mechanisms such as data execution prevention (DEP) as well as code-reuse attacks became more prevalent. In this paper, we show that ISR can be extended to also protect against code-reuse attacks while at the same time offering security guarantees similar to those of software diversity, control-flow integrity, and information hiding. We present Scylla, a scheme that deploys a new technique for in-place code encryption to hide the code layout of a randomized binary, and restricts the control flow to a benign execution path. This allows us to i) implicitly restrict control-flow targets to basic block entries without requiring the extraction of a control-flow graph, ii) achieve execution integrity within legitimate basic blocks, and iii) hide the underlying code layout under malicious read access to the program. Our analysis demonstrates that Scylla is capable of preventing state-of-the-art attacks such as just-in-time return-oriented programming (JIT-ROP) and crash-resistant oriented programming (CROP). We extensively evaluate our prototype implementation of Scylla and show feasible performance overhead. We also provide details on how this overhead can be significantly reduced with dedicated hardware support

Fast generators for the Diffie-Hellman key agreement protocol and malicious standards

The Diffie-Hellman key agreement protocol is based on taking large powers of a generator of a prime-order cyclic group. Some generators allow faster exponentiation. We show that to a large extent, using the fast generators is as secure as using a randomly chosen generator. On the other hand, we show that if there is some case in which fast generators are less secure, then this could be used by a malicious authority to generate a standard for the Diffie-Hellman key agreement protocol which has a hidden trapdoor.Comment: Small update

Encrypted Shared Data Spaces

The deployment of Share Data Spaces in open, possibly hostile, environments arises the need of protecting the confidentiality of the data space content. Existing approaches focus on access control mechanisms that protect the data space from untrusted agents. The basic assumption is that the hosts (and their administrators) where the data space is deployed have to be trusted. Encryption schemes can be used to protect the data space content from malicious hosts. However, these schemes do not allow searching on encrypted data. In this paper we present a novel encryption scheme that allows tuple matching on completely encrypted tuples. Since the data space does not need to decrypt tuples to perform the search, tuple confidentiality can be guaranteed even when the data space is deployed on malicious hosts (or an adversary gains access to the host). Our scheme does not require authorised agents to share keys for inserting and retrieving tuples. Each authorised agent can encrypt, decrypt, and search encrypted tuples without having to know other agents’ keys. This is beneficial inasmuch as it simplifies the task of key management. An implementation of an encrypted data space based on this scheme is described and some preliminary performance results are given

Predictable arguments of knowledge

We initiate a formal investigation on the power of predictability for argument of knowledge systems for NP. Specifically, we consider private-coin argument systems where the answer of the prover can be predicted, given the private randomness of the verifier; we call such protocols Predictable Arguments of Knowledge (PAoK). Our study encompasses a full characterization of PAoK, showing that such arguments can be made extremely laconic, with the prover sending a single bit, and assumed to have only one round (i.e., two messages) of communication without loss of generality. We additionally explore PAoK satisfying additional properties (including zero-knowledge and the possibility of re-using the same challenge across multiple executions with the prover), present several constructions of PAoK relying on different cryptographic tools, and discuss applications to cryptography

Insider-proof encryption with applications for quantum key distribution

It has been pointed out that current protocols for device independent quantum key distribution can leak key to the adversary when devices are used repeatedly and that this issue has not been addressed. We introduce the notion of an insider-proof channel. This allows us to propose a means by which devices with memories could be reused from one run of a device independent quantum key distribution protocol to the next while bounding the leakage to Eve, under the assumption that one run of the protocol could be completed securely using devices with memories.Comment: 20 pages, version 2: new presentation introducing the insider-proof channel as a cryptographic elemen