12,881 research outputs found
Classical Cryptographic Protocols in a Quantum World
Cryptographic protocols, such as protocols for secure function evaluation
(SFE), have played a crucial role in the development of modern cryptography.
The extensive theory of these protocols, however, deals almost exclusively with
classical attackers. If we accept that quantum information processing is the
most realistic model of physically feasible computation, then we must ask: what
classical protocols remain secure against quantum attackers?
Our main contribution is showing the existence of classical two-party
protocols for the secure evaluation of any polynomial-time function under
reasonable computational assumptions (for example, it suffices that the
learning with errors problem be hard for quantum polynomial time). Our result
shows that the basic two-party feasibility picture from classical cryptography
remains unchanged in a quantum world.Comment: Full version of an old paper in Crypto'11. Invited to IJQI. This is
authors' copy with different formattin
Concurrent Knowledge-Extraction in the Public-Key Model
Knowledge extraction is a fundamental notion, modelling machine possession of
values (witnesses) in a computational complexity sense. The notion provides an
essential tool for cryptographic protocol design and analysis, enabling one to
argue about the internal state of protocol players without ever looking at this
supposedly secret state. However, when transactions are concurrent (e.g., over
the Internet) with players possessing public-keys (as is common in
cryptography), assuring that entities ``know'' what they claim to know, where
adversaries may be well coordinated across different transactions, turns out to
be much more subtle and in need of re-examination. Here, we investigate how to
formally treat knowledge possession by parties (with registered public-keys)
interacting over the Internet. Stated more technically, we look into the
relative power of the notion of ``concurrent knowledge-extraction'' (CKE) in
the concurrent zero-knowledge (CZK) bare public-key (BPK) model.Comment: 38 pages, 4 figure
Quantum Cryptography Beyond Quantum Key Distribution
Quantum cryptography is the art and science of exploiting quantum mechanical
effects in order to perform cryptographic tasks. While the most well-known
example of this discipline is quantum key distribution (QKD), there exist many
other applications such as quantum money, randomness generation, secure two-
and multi-party computation and delegated quantum computation. Quantum
cryptography also studies the limitations and challenges resulting from quantum
adversaries---including the impossibility of quantum bit commitment, the
difficulty of quantum rewinding and the definition of quantum security models
for classical primitives. In this review article, aimed primarily at
cryptographers unfamiliar with the quantum world, we survey the area of
theoretical quantum cryptography, with an emphasis on the constructions and
limitations beyond the realm of QKD.Comment: 45 pages, over 245 reference
On the Round Complexity of Randomized Byzantine Agreement
We prove lower bounds on the round complexity of randomized Byzantine agreement (BA) protocols, bounding the halting probability of such protocols after one and two rounds. In particular, we prove that:
1) BA protocols resilient against n/3 [resp., n/4] corruptions terminate (under attack) at the end of the first round with probability at most o(1) [resp., 1/2+ o(1)].
2) BA protocols resilient against n/4 corruptions terminate at the end of the second round with probability at most 1-Theta(1).
3) For a large class of protocols (including all BA protocols used in practice) and under a plausible combinatorial conjecture, BA protocols resilient against n/3 [resp., n/4] corruptions terminate at the end of the second round with probability at most o(1) [resp., 1/2 + o(1)].
The above bounds hold even when the parties use a trusted setup phase, e.g., a public-key infrastructure (PKI).
The third bound essentially matches the recent protocol of Micali (ITCS\u2717) that tolerates up to n/3 corruptions and terminates at the end of the third round with constant probability
On the Design of Cryptographic Primitives
The main objective of this work is twofold. On the one hand, it gives a brief
overview of the area of two-party cryptographic protocols. On the other hand,
it proposes new schemes and guidelines for improving the practice of robust
protocol design. In order to achieve such a double goal, a tour through the
descriptions of the two main cryptographic primitives is carried out. Within
this survey, some of the most representative algorithms based on the Theory of
Finite Fields are provided and new general schemes and specific algorithms
based on Graph Theory are proposed
Composability in quantum cryptography
In this article, we review several aspects of composability in the context of
quantum cryptography. The first part is devoted to key distribution. We discuss
the security criteria that a quantum key distribution protocol must fulfill to
allow its safe use within a larger security application (e.g., for secure
message transmission). To illustrate the practical use of composability, we
show how to generate a continuous key stream by sequentially composing rounds
of a quantum key distribution protocol. In a second part, we take a more
general point of view, which is necessary for the study of cryptographic
situations involving, for example, mutually distrustful parties. We explain the
universal composability framework and state the composition theorem which
guarantees that secure protocols can securely be composed to larger
applicationsComment: 18 pages, 2 figure
Concurrently Non-Malleable Zero Knowledge in the Authenticated Public-Key Model
We consider a type of zero-knowledge protocols that are of interest for their
practical applications within networks like the Internet: efficient
zero-knowledge arguments of knowledge that remain secure against concurrent
man-in-the-middle attacks. In an effort to reduce the setup assumptions
required for efficient zero-knowledge arguments of knowledge that remain secure
against concurrent man-in-the-middle attacks, we consider a model, which we
call the Authenticated Public-Key (APK) model. The APK model seems to
significantly reduce the setup assumptions made by the CRS model (as no trusted
party or honest execution of a centralized algorithm are required), and can be
seen as a slightly stronger variation of the Bare Public-Key (BPK) model from
\cite{CGGM,MR}, and a weaker variation of the registered public-key model used
in \cite{BCNP}. We then define and study man-in-the-middle attacks in the APK
model. Our main result is a constant-round concurrent non-malleable
zero-knowledge argument of knowledge for any polynomial-time relation
(associated to a language in ), under the (minimal) assumption of
the existence of a one-way function family. Furthermore,We show time-efficient
instantiations of our protocol based on known number-theoretic assumptions. We
also note a negative result with respect to further reducing the setup
assumptions of our protocol to those in the (unauthenticated) BPK model, by
showing that concurrently non-malleable zero-knowledge arguments of knowledge
in the BPK model are only possible for trivial languages
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