579 research outputs found
A Quantum-Proof Non-Malleable Extractor, With Application to Privacy Amplification against Active Quantum Adversaries
In privacy amplification, two mutually trusted parties aim to amplify the
secrecy of an initial shared secret in order to establish a shared private
key by exchanging messages over an insecure communication channel. If the
channel is authenticated the task can be solved in a single round of
communication using a strong randomness extractor; choosing a quantum-proof
extractor allows one to establish security against quantum adversaries.
In the case that the channel is not authenticated, Dodis and Wichs (STOC'09)
showed that the problem can be solved in two rounds of communication using a
non-malleable extractor, a stronger pseudo-random construction than a strong
extractor.
We give the first construction of a non-malleable extractor that is secure
against quantum adversaries. The extractor is based on a construction by Li
(FOCS'12), and is able to extract from source of min-entropy rates larger than
. Combining this construction with a quantum-proof variant of the
reduction of Dodis and Wichs, shown by Cohen and Vidick (unpublished), we
obtain the first privacy amplification protocol secure against active quantum
adversaries
Certified randomness in quantum physics
The concept of randomness plays an important role in many disciplines. On one
hand, the question of whether random processes exist is fundamental for our
understanding of nature. On the other hand, randomness is a resource for
cryptography, algorithms and simulations. Standard methods for generating
randomness rely on assumptions on the devices that are difficult to meet in
practice. However, quantum technologies allow for new methods for generating
certified randomness. These methods are known as device-independent because do
not rely on any modeling of the devices. Here we review the efforts and
challenges to design device-independent randomness generators.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figure
Non-Malleable Extractors and Codes, with their Many Tampered Extensions
Randomness extractors and error correcting codes are fundamental objects in
computer science. Recently, there have been several natural generalizations of
these objects, in the context and study of tamper resilient cryptography. These
are seeded non-malleable extractors, introduced in [DW09]; seedless
non-malleable extractors, introduced in [CG14b]; and non-malleable codes,
introduced in [DPW10].
However, explicit constructions of non-malleable extractors appear to be
hard, and the known constructions are far behind their non-tampered
counterparts.
In this paper we make progress towards solving the above problems. Our
contributions are as follows.
(1) We construct an explicit seeded non-malleable extractor for min-entropy
. This dramatically improves all previous results and gives a
simpler 2-round privacy amplification protocol with optimal entropy loss,
matching the best known result in [Li15b].
(2) We construct the first explicit non-malleable two-source extractor for
min-entropy , with output size and
error .
(3) We initiate the study of two natural generalizations of seedless
non-malleable extractors and non-malleable codes, where the sources or the
codeword may be tampered many times. We construct the first explicit
non-malleable two-source extractor with tampering degree up to
, which works for min-entropy , with
output size and error . We show that we can
efficiently sample uniformly from any pre-image. By the connection in [CG14b],
we also obtain the first explicit non-malleable codes with tampering degree
up to , relative rate , and error
.Comment: 50 pages; see paper for full abstrac
Revisiting Deniability in Quantum Key Exchange via Covert Communication and Entanglement Distillation
We revisit the notion of deniability in quantum key exchange (QKE), a topic
that remains largely unexplored. In the only work on this subject by Donald
Beaver, it is argued that QKE is not necessarily deniable due to an
eavesdropping attack that limits key equivocation. We provide more insight into
the nature of this attack and how it extends to other constructions such as QKE
obtained from uncloneable encryption. We then adopt the framework for quantum
authenticated key exchange, developed by Mosca et al., and extend it to
introduce the notion of coercer-deniable QKE, formalized in terms of the
indistinguishability of real and fake coercer views. Next, we apply results
from a recent work by Arrazola and Scarani on covert quantum communication to
establish a connection between covert QKE and deniability. We propose DC-QKE, a
simple deniable covert QKE protocol, and prove its deniability via a reduction
to the security of covert QKE. Finally, we consider how entanglement
distillation can be used to enable information-theoretically deniable protocols
for QKE and tasks beyond key exchange.Comment: 16 pages, published in the proceedings of NordSec 201
Random Numbers Certified by Bell's Theorem
Randomness is a fundamental feature in nature and a valuable resource for
applications ranging from cryptography and gambling to numerical simulation of
physical and biological systems. Random numbers, however, are difficult to
characterize mathematically, and their generation must rely on an unpredictable
physical process. Inaccuracies in the theoretical modelling of such processes
or failures of the devices, possibly due to adversarial attacks, limit the
reliability of random number generators in ways that are difficult to control
and detect. Here, inspired by earlier work on nonlocality based and device
independent quantum information processing, we show that the nonlocal
correlations of entangled quantum particles can be used to certify the presence
of genuine randomness. It is thereby possible to design of a new type of
cryptographically secure random number generator which does not require any
assumption on the internal working of the devices. This strong form of
randomness generation is impossible classically and possible in quantum systems
only if certified by a Bell inequality violation. We carry out a
proof-of-concept demonstration of this proposal in a system of two entangled
atoms separated by approximately 1 meter. The observed Bell inequality
violation, featuring near-perfect detection efficiency, guarantees that 42 new
random numbers are generated with 99% confidence. Our results lay the
groundwork for future device-independent quantum information experiments and
for addressing fundamental issues raised by the intrinsic randomness of quantum
theory.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, 16 page appendix. Version as close as possible
to the published version following the terms of the journa
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
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