Making Sigma-Protocols Non-interactive Without Random Oracles

Damg˚ard, Fazio and Nicolosi (TCC 2006) gave a transformation of Sigma-protocols, 3-move honest verifier zero-knowledge proofs, into efficient non-interactive zero-knowledge arguments for a designated verifier. Their transformation uses additively homomorphic encryption to encrypt the verifier’s challenge, which the prover uses to compute an encrypted answer. The transformation does not rely on the random oracle model but proving soundness requires a complexity leveraging assumption. We propose an alternative instantiation of their transformation and show that it achieves culpable soundness without complexity leveraging. This improves upon an earlier result by Ventre and Visconti (Africacrypt 2009), who used a different construction which achieved weak culpable soundness. We demonstrate how our construction can be used to prove validity of encrypted votes in a referendum. This yields a voting system with homomorphic tallying that does not rely on the Fiat-Shamir heuristic

Efektiivsed mitteinteraktiivsed nullteadmusprotokollid referentssõne mudelis

Väitekirja elektrooniline versioon ei sisalda publikatsioone.Koos digitaalse ajastu võidukäiguga on interneti vahendusel võimalik sooritada üha ulmelisemana näivaid tegevusi. Täielikule krüpteeringule ehitatud mobiilsed rakendused, nagu näiteks WhatsApp, suudavad tagada, et kõne või sõnum jõuaksid üksnes õige adressaadini. Enamik pangasüsteeme garanteerivad TLS protokolli kasutades, et arvete maksmisel ja ülekannete tegemisel poleks nende andmeid kellelgi võimalik lugeda ega muuta. Mõned riigid pakuvad võimalust elektroonilisel teel hääletada (näiteks Eesti) või referendumeid läbi viia (näiteks Šveits), tagades sealjuures traditsioonilise paberhääletuse tasemel turvalisuse kriteeriumid. Kõik eelnevalt kirjeldatud tegevused vajavad kasutajate turvalisuse tagamiseks krüptograafilist protokolli. Tegelikkuses ei saa me kunagi eeldada, et kõik protokolli osapooled järgivad protokolli spetsifikatsiooni. Reaalses elus peab protokolli turvalisuseks iga osapool tõestama, et ta seda järgis ilma privaatsuse ohverdamiseta. Üks viis seda teha on nullteadmusprotokolli abil. Nullteadmusprotokoll on tõestus, mis ei lekita mingit informatsiooni peale selle, et väide on tõene. Tihti tahame, et nullteadmusprotokoll oleks mitteinteraktiivne. Sellisel juhul piisab, kui tõestus on arvutatud ainult ühe korra ning verifitseerijatel on igal ajal võimalik seda kontrollida. On kaks peamist mudelit, mis võimaldavad mitteinteraktiivsete nullteadmusprotokollide loomist: juhusliku oraakli (JO) mudel ja referentssõne mudel. JO mudeli protokollid on väga efektiivsed, kuid mõningate piirangute tõttu eelistame referentssõne mudelit. Selles töös esitleme kolme stsenaariumit, milles mitteinteraktiivne nullteadmus on asjakohane: verifitseeritav arvutamine, autoriseerimine ja elektrooniline hääletamine. Igas stsenaariumis pakume välja nullteadmusprotokolli referentssõne mudelis, mis on seni efektiivseim ning võrreldava efektiivsusega protokollidega JO mudelis.In the current digital era, we can do increasingly astonishing activities remotely using only our electronic devices. Using mobile applications such as WhatsApp, we can contact someone with the guarantee, using an end-to-end encryption protocol, that only the recipient can know the conversation's contents. Most banking systems enable us to pay our bills and perform other financial transactions, and use the TLS protocol to guarantee that no one can read or modify the transaction data. Some countries provide an option to vote electronically in an election (e.g. Estonia) or referendum (e.g. Switzerland) with similar privacy guarantees to traditional paper voting. In all these activities, a cryptographic protocol is required to ensure users' privacy. In reality, some parties participating in a protocol might not act according to what was agreed in the protocol specification. Hence, for a real world protocol to be secure, we also need each party to prove that it behaves honestly, but without sacrificing privacy of its inputs. This can be done using a zero-knowledge argument: a proof by a polynomial-time prover that gives nothing else away besides its correctness. In many cases, we want a zero-knowledge argument to be non-interactive and transferable, so that it is computed only once, but can be verified by many verifiers at any future time. There are two main models that enable transferable non-interactive zero-knowledge (NIZK) arguments: the random oracle (RO) model and the common reference string (CRS) model. Protocols in the RO model are very efficient, but due to some of its limitations, we prefer working in the CRS model. In this work we provide three scenarios where NIZK arguments are relevant: verifiable computation, authorization, and electronic voting. In each scenario, we propose NIZK arguments in the CRS model that are more efficient than existing ones, and are comparable in efficiency to the best known NIZK arguments in the RO model

Lattice-Based proof of a shuffle

In this paper we present the first fully post-quantum proof of a shuffle for RLWE encryption schemes. Shuffles are commonly used to construct mixing networks (mix-nets), a key element to ensure anonymity in many applications such as electronic voting systems. They should preserve anonymity even against an attack using quantum computers in order to guarantee long-term privacy. The proof presented in this paper is built over RLWE commitments which are perfectly binding and computationally hiding under the RLWE assumption, thus achieving security in a post-quantum scenario. Furthermore we provide a new definition for a secure mixing node (mix-node) and prove that our construction satisfies this definition.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Making Code Voting Secure against Insider Threats using Unconditionally Secure MIX Schemes and Human PSMT Protocols

Code voting was introduced by Chaum as a solution for using a possibly infected-by-malware device to cast a vote in an electronic voting application. Chaum's work on code voting assumed voting codes are physically delivered to voters using the mail system, implicitly requiring to trust the mail system. This is not necessarily a valid assumption to make - especially if the mail system cannot be trusted. When conspiring with the recipient of the cast ballots, privacy is broken. It is clear to the public that when it comes to privacy, computers and "secure" communication over the Internet cannot fully be trusted. This emphasizes the importance of using: (1) Unconditional security for secure network communication. (2) Reduce reliance on untrusted computers. In this paper we explore how to remove the mail system trust assumption in code voting. We use PSMT protocols (SCN 2012) where with the help of visual aids, humans can carry out $\mod 10$ addition correctly with a 99\% degree of accuracy. We introduce an unconditionally secure MIX based on the combinatorics of set systems. Given that end users of our proposed voting scheme construction are humans we \emph{cannot use} classical Secure Multi Party Computation protocols. Our solutions are for both single and multi-seat elections achieving: \begin{enumerate}[i)] \item An anonymous and perfectly secure communication network secure against a $t$-bounded passive adversary used to deliver voting, \item The end step of the protocol can be handled by a human to evade the threat of malware. \end{enumerate} We do not focus on active adversaries

Cryptographic Randomized Response Techniques

We develop cryptographically secure techniques to guarantee unconditional privacy for respondents to polls. Our constructions are efficient and practical, and are shown not to allow cheating respondents to affect the ``tally'' by more than their own vote -- which will be given the exact same weight as that of other respondents. We demonstrate solutions to this problem based on both traditional cryptographic techniques and quantum cryptography.Comment: 21 page

Shorter lattice-based zero-knowledge proofs for the correctness of a shuffle

In an electronic voting procedure, mixing networks are used to ensure anonymity of the casted votes. Each node of the network re-encrypts the input list of ciphertexts and randomly permutes it in a process named shuffle, and must prove (in zero-knowledge) that the process was applied honestly. To maintain security of such a process in a post-quantum scenario, new proofs are based on different mathematical assumptions, such as lattice-based problems. Nonetheless, the best lattice-based protocols to ensure verifiable shuffling have linear communication complexity on N, the number of shuffled ciphertexts. In this paper we propose the first sub-linear (on N) post-quantum zero-knowledge argument for the correctness of a shuffle, for which we have mainly used two ideas: arithmetic circuit satisfiability results from Baum et al. (CRYPTO'2018) and Beneš networks to model a permutation of N elements. The achieved communication complexity of our protocol with respect to N is O(v(N)log^2(N)), but we will also highlight its dependency on other important parameters of the underlying lattice ingredients.The work is partially supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovaci´on (MICINN), under Project PID2019-109379RB-I00 and by the European Union PROMETHEUS project (Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program, grant 780701). Authors thank Tjerand Silde for pointing out an incorrect set of parameters (Section 4.1) that we had proposed in a previous version of the manuscript.Postprint (author's final draft

Fiat-Shamir for highly sound protocols is instantiable

The Fiat–Shamir (FS) transformation (Fiat and Shamir, Crypto '86) is a popular paradigm for constructing very efficient non-interactive zero-knowledge (NIZK) arguments and signature schemes from a hash function and any three-move interactive protocol satisfying certain properties. Despite its wide-spread applicability both in theory and in practice, the known positive results for proving security of the FS paradigm are in the random oracle model only, i.e., they assume that the hash function is modeled as an external random function accessible to all parties. On the other hand, a sequence of negative results shows that for certain classes of interactive protocols, the FS transform cannot be instantiated in the standard model. We initiate the study of complementary positive results, namely, studying classes of interactive protocols where the FS transform does have standard-model instantiations. In particular, we show that for a class of “highly sound” protocols that we define, instantiating the FS transform via a q-wise independent hash function yields NIZK arguments and secure signature schemes. In the case of NIZK, we obtain a weaker “q-bounded” zero-knowledge flavor where the simulator works for all adversaries asking an a-priori bounded number of queries q; in the case of signatures, we obtain the weaker notion of random-message unforgeability against q-bounded random message attacks. Our main idea is that when the protocol is highly sound, then instead of using random-oracle programming, one can use complexity leveraging. The question is whether such highly sound protocols exist and if so, which protocols lie in this class. We answer this question in the affirmative in the common reference string (CRS) model and under strong assumptions. Namely, assuming indistinguishability obfuscation and puncturable pseudorandom functions we construct a compiler that transforms any 3-move interactive protocol with instance-independent commitments and simulators (a property satisfied by the Lapidot–Shamir protocol, Crypto '90) into a compiled protocol in the CRS model that is highly sound. We also present a second compiler, in order to be able to start from a larger class of protocols, which only requires instance-independent commitments (a property for example satisfied by the classical protocol for quadratic residuosity due to Blum, Crypto '81). For the second compiler we require dual-mode commitments. We hope that our work inspires more research on classes of (efficient) 3-move protocols where Fiat–Shamir is (efficiently) instantiable

The political economy of growth and distribution: A theoretical critique

This paper reconsiders the political economy approach to growth and distribution according to which (1) rising inequality induces more government redistribution; (2) more government redistribution is financed by higher distortionary taxation; and (3) higher distortionary taxes reduce economic growth. We present a variety of theoretical arguments demonstrating that all three propositions may be overturned by simply changing an assumption in a plausible way or adding a relevant real-world element to the basal models. The political economy models of growth and distribution, as well as the specific inequality-growth transmission channel they propose, must therefore be assessed as overly simplistic and inadequate with respect to the issues studied. --Political Economy,Redistribution,Inequality,Economic growth