37 research outputs found
One-Way Signature Chaining - A New Paradigm For Group Cryptosystems
In this paper, we describe a new cryptographic primitive called \emph{(One-Way) Signature Chaining}. Signature chaining is essentially a method of generating a chain of signatures on the same message by different users. Each signature acts as a ``link\u27\u27 of the chain. The \emph{one-way}-ness implies that the chaining process is one-way in the sense that more links can be easily added to the chain. However, it is computationally infeasible to remove any intermediate links without removing all the links. The signatures so created are called chain signatures. We give precise definitions of chain signatures and discuss some applications in trust transfer. We also present a practical construction of a CS scheme that is secure under the Computational Diffie-Hellman (CDH) assumption in bilinear maps
Quantum-Secure Aggregate One-time Signatures with Detecting Functionality
An aggregate signature (ASIG) scheme allows any user to compress multiple signatures into a short signature called an aggregate signature. While a conventional ASIG scheme cannot detect any invalid messages from an aggregate signature, an ASIG scheme with detecting functionality (D-ASIG) has an additional property which can identify invalid messages from aggregate signatures. Hence, D-ASIG is useful to reduce the total amount of signature-sizes on a channel. On the other hand, development of quantum computers has been advanced recently. However, all existing D-ASIG schemes are insecure against attacks using quantum algorithms, which we call quantum attacks. In this paper, we propose a D-ASIG scheme with quantum-security which means security in a quantum setting. Hence, we first introduce quantum-security notions of ASIGs and D-ASIGs because there is no research on such security notions for (D-)ASIGs. Second, we propose a lattice-based aggregate one-time signature scheme with detecting functionality, and prove that this scheme satisfies our quantum-security in the quantum random oracle model and the certified key model. Hence, this scheme is the first quantum-secure D-ASIG
Walking Onions: Scaling Distribution of Information Safely in Anonymity Networks
Scaling anonymity networks offers unique security challenges, as
attackers can exploit differing views of the network’s topology to
perform epistemic and route capture attacks. Anonymity networks in
practice, such as Tor, have opted for security over scalability by
requiring participants to share a globally consistent view of all relays
to prevent these kinds of attacks. Such an approach requires each user
to maintain up-to-date information about every relay, causing the total
amount of data each user must download every epoch to scale linearly
with the number of relays. As the number of clients increases, more
relays must be added to provide bandwidth, further exacerbating the
total load on the network.
In this work, we present Walking Onions, a set of protocols improving
scalability for anonymity networks. Walking Onions enables constant-size
scaling of the information each user must download in every epoch, even
as the number of relays in the network grows. Furthermore, we show how
relaxing the clients’ bandwidth growth from constant to logarithmic can
enable an outsized improvement to relays’ bandwidth costs. Notably,
Walking Onions offers the same security properties as current designs
that require a globally consistent network view. We present two protocol
variants. The first requires minimal changes from current onion-routing
systems. The second presents a more significant design change, thereby
reducing the latency required to establish a path through the network
while providing better forward secrecy than previous such constructions.
We evaluate Walking Onions against a generalized onion-routing anonymity
network and discuss tradeoffs among the approaches
A Touch of Evil: High-Assurance Cryptographic Hardware from Untrusted Components
The semiconductor industry is fully globalized and integrated circuits (ICs)
are commonly defined, designed and fabricated in different premises across the
world. This reduces production costs, but also exposes ICs to supply chain
attacks, where insiders introduce malicious circuitry into the final products.
Additionally, despite extensive post-fabrication testing, it is not uncommon
for ICs with subtle fabrication errors to make it into production systems.
While many systems may be able to tolerate a few byzantine components, this is
not the case for cryptographic hardware, storing and computing on confidential
data. For this reason, many error and backdoor detection techniques have been
proposed over the years. So far all attempts have been either quickly
circumvented, or come with unrealistically high manufacturing costs and
complexity.
This paper proposes Myst, a practical high-assurance architecture, that uses
commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware, and provides strong security
guarantees, even in the presence of multiple malicious or faulty components.
The key idea is to combine protective-redundancy with modern threshold
cryptographic techniques to build a system tolerant to hardware trojans and
errors. To evaluate our design, we build a Hardware Security Module that
provides the highest level of assurance possible with COTS components.
Specifically, we employ more than a hundred COTS secure crypto-coprocessors,
verified to FIPS140-2 Level 4 tamper-resistance standards, and use them to
realize high-confidentiality random number generation, key derivation, public
key decryption and signing. Our experiments show a reasonable computational
overhead (less than 1% for both Decryption and Signing) and an exponential
increase in backdoor-tolerance as more ICs are added
Key-and-Signature Compact Multi-Signatures for Blockchain: A Compiler with Realizations
Multi-signature is a protocol where a set of signatures jointly sign a
message so that the final signature is significantly shorter than concatenating
individual signatures together. Recently, it finds applications in blockchain,
where several users want to jointly authorize a payment through a
multi-signature. However, in this setting, there is no centralized authority
and it could suffer from a rogue key attack where the attacker can generate his
own keys arbitrarily. Further, to minimize the storage on blockchain, it is
desired that the aggregated public-key and the aggregated signature are both as
short as possible. In this paper, we find a compiler that converts a kind of
identification (ID) scheme (which we call a linear ID) to a multi-signature so
that both the aggregated public-key and the aggregated signature have a size
independent of the number of signers. Our compiler is provably secure. The
advantage of our results is that we reduce a multi-party problem to a weakly
secure two-party problem. We realize our compiler with two ID schemes. The
first is Schnorr ID. The second is a new lattice-based ID scheme, which via our
compiler gives the first regular lattice-based multi-signature scheme with
key-and-signature compact without a restart during signing process
Digital Signatures for PTP Using Transparent Clocks
Smart grids use synchronous real-time measurements from phasor measurement units (PMU) across portions of a grid to provide grid-wide integrity. Achieving synchronicity requires either accurate GPS clocks at each PMU or a high-resolution clock synchronization protocol, such as the Precision Time Protocol (PTP), specified in IEEE 1588 with the power profile in IEEE C37.238-2011. PTP does not natively include measures to provide authenticity or integrity for timestamps transmitted across an Ethernet network, though there has been recent work in providing end-to-end integrity of transmitted timestamps. However, PTP for use in the smart grid requires a version of the protocol in which network switches update the trusted timestamp in flight, meaning that an end-to-end approach is no longer sufficient. We propose two methods to provide for the integrity of the transmitted and updated timestamps as well as to ensure the authority of all network devices altering the time. In the first, we amend the PTP standard to include signatures as part of the time packet itself at the cost of increased jitter in the system. In the second, we transmit these signatures over a wireless network, reducing congestion on the original network. We test both methods on a simulated PTP switch intended for experimentation only and demonstrate that the use of a second network dedicated to verification-related information is better for current networks, as including signatures in the original packet causes more jitter than is acceptable for synchronizing PMUs in particular
Digital Signatures for PTP Using Transparent Clocks
Smart grids use synchronous real-time measurements from phasor measurement units (PMU) across portions of a grid to provide grid-wide integrity. Achieving synchronicity requires either accurate GPS clocks at each PMU or a high-resolution clock synchronization protocol, such as the Precision Time Protocol (PTP), specified in IEEE 1588 with the power profile in IEEE C37.238-2011. PTP does not natively include measures to provide authenticity or integrity for timestamps transmitted across an Ethernet network, though there has been recent work in providing end-to-end integrity of transmitted timestamps. However, PTP for use in the smart grid requires a version of the protocol in which network switches update the trusted timestamp in flight, meaning that an end-to-end approach is no longer sufficient. We propose two methods to provide for the integrity of the transmitted and updated timestamps as well as to ensure the authority of all network devices altering the time. In the first, we amend the PTP standard to include signatures as part of the time packet itself at the cost of increased jitter in the system. In the second, we transmit these signatures over a wireless network, reducing congestion on the original network. We test both methods on a simulated PTP switch intended for experimentation only and demonstrate that the use of a second network dedicated to verification-related information is better for current networks, as including signatures in the original packet causes more jitter than is acceptable for synchronizing PMUs in particular
Security and Privacy Issues in Wireless Mesh Networks: A Survey
This book chapter identifies various security threats in wireless mesh
network (WMN). Keeping in mind the critical requirement of security and user
privacy in WMNs, this chapter provides a comprehensive overview of various
possible attacks on different layers of the communication protocol stack for
WMNs and their corresponding defense mechanisms. First, it identifies the
security vulnerabilities in the physical, link, network, transport, application
layers. Furthermore, various possible attacks on the key management protocols,
user authentication and access control protocols, and user privacy preservation
protocols are presented. After enumerating various possible attacks, the
chapter provides a detailed discussion on various existing security mechanisms
and protocols to defend against and wherever possible prevent the possible
attacks. Comparative analyses are also presented on the security schemes with
regards to the cryptographic schemes used, key management strategies deployed,
use of any trusted third party, computation and communication overhead involved
etc. The chapter then presents a brief discussion on various trust management
approaches for WMNs since trust and reputation-based schemes are increasingly
becoming popular for enforcing security in wireless networks. A number of open
problems in security and privacy issues for WMNs are subsequently discussed
before the chapter is finally concluded.Comment: 62 pages, 12 figures, 6 tables. This chapter is an extension of the
author's previous submission in arXiv submission: arXiv:1102.1226. There are
some text overlaps with the previous submissio
Digital Signatures for Consensus
We present a pairing-based signature scheme for use in
blockchains
that achieves substantial savings in bandwidth and storage requirements
while providing strong security guarantees.
Our signature scheme supports aggregation on the same message, which
allows us to compress multiple signatures on the same block during
consensus, and achieves forward security, which prevents adaptive
attacks on the blockchain.
Our signature scheme can be applied to all blockchains that rely on multi-party consensus protocols to agree on blocks of transactions (such as proof-of-stake or permissioned blockchains)