Using quantum key distribution for cryptographic purposes: a survey

The appealing feature of quantum key distribution (QKD), from a cryptographic viewpoint, is the ability to prove the information-theoretic security (ITS) of the established keys. As a key establishment primitive, QKD however does not provide a standalone security service in its own: the secret keys established by QKD are in general then used by a subsequent cryptographic applications for which the requirements, the context of use and the security properties can vary. It is therefore important, in the perspective of integrating QKD in security infrastructures, to analyze how QKD can be combined with other cryptographic primitives. The purpose of this survey article, which is mostly centered on European research results, is to contribute to such an analysis. We first review and compare the properties of the existing key establishment techniques, QKD being one of them. We then study more specifically two generic scenarios related to the practical use of QKD in cryptographic infrastructures: 1) using QKD as a key renewal technique for a symmetric cipher over a point-to-point link; 2) using QKD in a network containing many users with the objective of offering any-to-any key establishment service. We discuss the constraints as well as the potential interest of using QKD in these contexts. We finally give an overview of challenges relative to the development of QKD technology that also constitute potential avenues for cryptographic research.Comment: Revised version of the SECOQC White Paper. Published in the special issue on QKD of TCS, Theoretical Computer Science (2014), pp. 62-8

Quantum Attacks on Modern Cryptography and Post-Quantum Cryptosystems

Cryptography is a critical technology in the modern computing industry, but the security of many cryptosystems relies on the difficulty of mathematical problems such as integer factorization and discrete logarithms. Large quantum computers can solve these problems efficiently, enabling the effective cryptanalysis of many common cryptosystems using such algorithms as Shor’s and Grover’s. If data integrity and security are to be preserved in the future, the algorithms that are vulnerable to quantum cryptanalytic techniques must be phased out in favor of quantum-proof cryptosystems. While quantum computer technology is still developing and is not yet capable of breaking commercial encryption, these steps can be taken immediately to ensure that the impending development of large quantum computers does not compromise sensitive data

A Survey on Homomorphic Encryption Schemes: Theory and Implementation

Legacy encryption systems depend on sharing a key (public or private) among the peers involved in exchanging an encrypted message. However, this approach poses privacy concerns. Especially with popular cloud services, the control over the privacy of the sensitive data is lost. Even when the keys are not shared, the encrypted material is shared with a third party that does not necessarily need to access the content. Moreover, untrusted servers, providers, and cloud operators can keep identifying elements of users long after users end the relationship with the services. Indeed, Homomorphic Encryption (HE), a special kind of encryption scheme, can address these concerns as it allows any third party to operate on the encrypted data without decrypting it in advance. Although this extremely useful feature of the HE scheme has been known for over 30 years, the first plausible and achievable Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) scheme, which allows any computable function to perform on the encrypted data, was introduced by Craig Gentry in 2009. Even though this was a major achievement, different implementations so far demonstrated that FHE still needs to be improved significantly to be practical on every platform. First, we present the basics of HE and the details of the well-known Partially Homomorphic Encryption (PHE) and Somewhat Homomorphic Encryption (SWHE), which are important pillars of achieving FHE. Then, the main FHE families, which have become the base for the other follow-up FHE schemes are presented. Furthermore, the implementations and recent improvements in Gentry-type FHE schemes are also surveyed. Finally, further research directions are discussed. This survey is intended to give a clear knowledge and foundation to researchers and practitioners interested in knowing, applying, as well as extending the state of the art HE, PHE, SWHE, and FHE systems.Comment: - Updated. (October 6, 2017) - This paper is an early draft of the survey that is being submitted to ACM CSUR and has been uploaded to arXiv for feedback from stakeholder

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

The Impact of Quantum Computing on Present Cryptography

The aim of this paper is to elucidate the implications of quantum computing in present cryptography and to introduce the reader to basic post-quantum algorithms. In particular the reader can delve into the following subjects: present cryptographic schemes (symmetric and asymmetric), differences between quantum and classical computing, challenges in quantum computing, quantum algorithms (Shor's and Grover's), public key encryption schemes affected, symmetric schemes affected, the impact on hash functions, and post quantum cryptography. Specifically, the section of Post-Quantum Cryptography deals with different quantum key distribution methods and mathematicalbased solutions, such as the BB84 protocol, lattice-based cryptography, multivariate-based cryptography, hash-based signatures and code-based cryptography.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figure, 3 tables, journal article - IJACS

Envisioning the Future of Cyber Security in Post-Quantum Era: A Survey on PQ Standardization, Applications, Challenges and Opportunities

The rise of quantum computers exposes vulnerabilities in current public key cryptographic protocols, necessitating the development of secure post-quantum (PQ) schemes. Hence, we conduct a comprehensive study on various PQ approaches, covering the constructional design, structural vulnerabilities, and offer security assessments, implementation evaluations, and a particular focus on side-channel attacks. We analyze global standardization processes, evaluate their metrics in relation to real-world applications, and primarily focus on standardized PQ schemes, selected additional signature competition candidates, and PQ-secure cutting-edge schemes beyond standardization. Finally, we present visions and potential future directions for a seamless transition to the PQ era

New Digital Signature Algorithm EHTv2

Every public-key encryption/decryption algorithm where the set of possible plain-texts is identical to the set of possible cipher-texts may be converted into a digital signature algorithm. That is quite different in the lattice (code)-based public-key cryptography. The decryption algorithm on a random input produces a valid plain-text, that is a signature, with a negligible probability. That explains why it is so difficult to construct a new secure and efficient lattice-based digital signature system. Though several solutions are known and taking part in the NIST Post Quantum Standardisation Process there is still a need to construct digital signature algorithms based on new principles. In this work, a new and efficient digital signature algorithm is suggested. Its design is simple and transparent. Its security is based on the hardness of an approximate closest vector problem in the maximum norm for some q-ary lattices. The signature is several times shorter than that provided by the NIST Selected Digital Signature Algorithms with comparable security level, while the public key size is larger

Cryptanalysis of ITRU

ITRU cryptosystem is a public key cryptosystem and one of the known variants of NTRU cryptosystem. Instead of working in a truncated polynomial ring, ITRU cryptosystem is based on the ring of integers. The authors claimed that ITRU has better features comparing to the classical NTRU, such as having a simple parameter selection algorithm, invertibility, and successful message decryption, and better security. In this paper, we present an attack technique against the ITRU cryptosystem, and it is mainly based on a simple frequency analysis on the letters of ciphertexts

ANALISIS SISTEM KRIPTOGRAFI MATRIKS SINGULAR BERBASIS POLINOMIAL

Commutative public key cryptosystems are vulnerable to quantum algorithm attacks. For this reason, experts have developed a public key cryptography system that involves matrix algebra with non-commutative multiplication operations. In addition, there is the NTRU public key cryptosystem, which is claimed to be not vulnerable to quantum algorithm attacks. The NTRU system works on a truncated polynomial ring so the resulting key length will be difficult to guess. In addition, encryption and description in NTRU are very fast compared to RSA, ElGamal and ECC because NTRU only involves polynomial multiplication. Researchers have formed a modified public key cryptosystem using a singular matrix in previous research. This study uses non-commutative algebra and a matrix that has no inverse. For this reason, in this study, researchers adopted polynomials in the NTRU public key cryptographic system so that the resulting key length is difficult to predict. The researcher changed the matrix entries in the form of integers into polynomial entries. Meanwhile, the singular matrix entry remains a ring matrix over integers. The results show that the proposed system produces polynomials whose length cannot be guessed, so a brute-force attack is tricky. Apart from that, this system is superior to NTRU because it does not use the inverse principle. If in NTRU, the resulting polynomial does not have an inverse, then another polynomial must be found and repeated until the step is successful