9,671 research outputs found
Quantum attacks on Bitcoin, and how to protect against them
The key cryptographic protocols used to secure the internet and financial
transactions of today are all susceptible to attack by the development of a
sufficiently large quantum computer. One particular area at risk are
cryptocurrencies, a market currently worth over 150 billion USD. We investigate
the risk of Bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies, to attacks by quantum
computers. We find that the proof-of-work used by Bitcoin is relatively
resistant to substantial speedup by quantum computers in the next 10 years,
mainly because specialized ASIC miners are extremely fast compared to the
estimated clock speed of near-term quantum computers. On the other hand, the
elliptic curve signature scheme used by Bitcoin is much more at risk, and could
be completely broken by a quantum computer as early as 2027, by the most
optimistic estimates. We analyze an alternative proof-of-work called Momentum,
based on finding collisions in a hash function, that is even more resistant to
speedup by a quantum computer. We also review the available post-quantum
signature schemes to see which one would best meet the security and efficiency
requirements of blockchain applications.Comment: 21 pages, 6 figures. For a rough update on the progress of Quantum
devices and prognostications on time from now to break Digital signatures,
see https://www.quantumcryptopocalypse.com/quantum-moores-law
Ring Learning With Errors: A crossroads between postquantum cryptography, machine learning and number theory
The present survey reports on the state of the art of the different
cryptographic functionalities built upon the ring learning with errors problem
and its interplay with several classical problems in algebraic number theory.
The survey is based to a certain extent on an invited course given by the
author at the Basque Center for Applied Mathematics in September 2018.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1508.01375 by other
authors/ comment of the author: quotation has been added to Theorem 5.
Making Existential-Unforgeable Signatures Strongly Unforgeable in the Quantum Random-Oracle Model
Strongly unforgeable signature schemes provide a more stringent security
guarantee than the standard existential unforgeability. It requires that not
only forging a signature on a new message is hard, it is infeasible as well to
produce a new signature on a message for which the adversary has seen valid
signatures before. Strongly unforgeable signatures are useful both in practice
and as a building block in many cryptographic constructions.
This work investigates a generic transformation that compiles any
existential-unforgeable scheme into a strongly unforgeable one, which was
proposed by Teranishi et al. and was proven in the classical random-oracle
model. Our main contribution is showing that the transformation also works
against quantum adversaries in the quantum random-oracle model. We develop
proof techniques such as adaptively programming a quantum random-oracle in a
new setting, which could be of independent interest. Applying the
transformation to an existential-unforgeable signature scheme due to Cash et
al., which can be shown to be quantum-secure assuming certain lattice problems
are hard for quantum computers, we get an efficient quantum-secure strongly
unforgeable signature scheme in the quantum random-oracle model.Comment: 15 pages, to appear in Proceedings TQC 201
- …