Round Optimal Concurrent MPC via Strong Simulation

In this paper, we study the round complexity of concurrently secure multi-party computation (MPC) with super-polynomial simulation (SPS) in the plain model. In the plain model, there are known explicit attacks that show that concurrently secure MPC with polynomial simulation is impossible to achieve; SPS security is the most widely studied model for concurrently secure MPC in the plain model. We obtain the following results: – Three-round concurrent MPC with SPS security against Byzantine adversaries, assuming sub-exponentially secure DDH and LWE. – Two-round concurrent MPC with SPS security against Byzantine adversaries for input-less randomized functionalities, assuming sub- exponentially secure indistinguishability obfuscation and DDH. In particular, this class includes sampling functionalities that allow parties to jointly sample a secure common reference string for cryptographic applications. Prior to our work, to the best of our knowledge, concurrent MPC with SPS security required roughly 20 rounds, although we are not aware of any work that even gave an approximation of the constant round complexity sufficient for the multi-party setting. We also improve over the previous best round complexity for the two-party setting, where 5 rounds were needed (Garg, Kiyoshima, and Pandey, Eurocrypt 2017). To obtain our results, we compile protocols that already achieve security against “semi-malicious” adversaries, to protocols secure against fully malicious adversaries, additionally assuming sub-exponential DDH. Our protocols develop new techniques to use two-round zero-knowledge with super-polynomial strong simulation, defined by Pass (Eurocrypt 2003) and very recently realized by Khurana and Sahai (FOCS 2017). These remain zero-knowledge against adversaries running in time larger than the running time of the simulator

Round Optimal Secure Multiparty Computation from Minimal Assumptions

We construct a four round secure multiparty computation (MPC) protocol in the plain model that achieves security against any dishonest majority. The security of our protocol relies only on the existence of four round oblivious transfer. This culminates the long line of research on constructing round-efficient MPC from minimal assumptions (at least w.r.t. black-box simulation)

Improved Black-Box Constructions of Composable Secure Computation

We close the gap between black-box and non-black-box constructions of $\mathit{composable}$ secure multiparty computation in the plain model under the $\mathit{minimal}$ assumption of semi-honest oblivious transfer. The notion of protocol composition we target is $\mathit{angel\text{-}based}$ security, or more precisely, security with super-polynomial helpers. In this notion, both the simulator and the adversary are given access to an oracle called an $\mathit{angel}$ that can perform some predefined super-polynomial time task. Angel-based security maintains the attractive properties of the universal composition framework while providing meaningful security guarantees in complex environments without having to trust anyone. Angel-based security can be achieved using non-black-box constructions in $\max(R_{\mathsf{OT}},\widetilde{O}(\log n))$ rounds where $R_{\mathsf{OT}}$ is the round-complexity of the semi-honest oblivious transfer. However, currently, the best known $\mathit{black\text{-}box}$ constructions under the same assumption require $\max(R_{\mathsf{OT}},\widetilde{O}(\log^2 n))$ rounds. If $R_{\mathsf{OT}}$ is a constant, the gap between non-black-box and black-box constructions can be a multiplicative factor $\log n$. We close this gap by presenting a $\max(R_{\mathsf{OT}},\widetilde{O}(\log n))$-round black-box construction. We achieve this result by constructing constant-round 1-1 CCA-secure commitments assuming only black-box access to one-way functions

Round-Preserving Parallel Composition of Probabilistic-Termination Protocols

An important benchmark for multi-party computation protocols (MPC) is their round complexity. For several important MPC tasks, (tight) lower bounds on the round complexity are known. However, for some of these tasks, such as broadcast, the lower bounds can be circumvented when the termination round of every party is not a priori known, and simultaneous termination is not guaranteed. Protocols with this property are called probabilistic-termination (PT) protocols. Running PT protocols in parallel affects the round complexity of the resulting protocol in somewhat unexpected ways. For instance, an execution of m protocols with constant expected round complexity might take O(log m) rounds to complete. In a seminal work, Ben-Or and El-Yaniv (Distributed Computing \u2703) developed a technique for parallel execution of arbitrarily many broadcast protocols, while preserving expected round complexity. More recently, Cohen et al. (CRYPTO \u2716) devised a framework for universal composition of PT protocols, and provided the first composable parallel-broadcast protocol with a simulation-based proof. These constructions crucially rely on the fact that broadcast is ``privacy free,\u27\u27 and do not generalize to arbitrary protocols in a straightforward way. This raises the question of whether it is possible to execute arbitrary PT protocols in parallel, without increasing the round complexity. In this paper we tackle this question and provide both feasibility and infeasibility results. We construct a round-preserving protocol compiler, secure against a dishonest minority of actively corrupted parties, that compiles arbitrary protocols into a protocol realizing their parallel composition, while having a black-box access to the underlying protocols. Furthermore, we prove that the same cannot be achieved, using known techniques, given only black-box access to the functionalities realized by the protocols, unless merely security against semi-honest corruptions is required, for which case we provide a protocol

Cryptography

The Oberwolfach workshop Cryptography brought together scientists from cryptography with mathematicians specializing in the algorithmic problems underlying cryptographic security. The goal of the workshop was to stimulate interaction and collaboration that enables a holistic approach to designing cryptography from the mathematical foundations to practical applications. The workshop covered basic computational problems such as factoring and computing discrete logarithms and short vectors. It addressed fundamental research results leading to innovative cryptography for protecting security and privacy in cloud applications. It also covered some practical applications

Concurrent-Secure Two-Party Computation in Two Rounds from Subexponential LWE

Very recently, two works were able to construct two-round secure multi-party computation (MPC) protocols in the plain model, without setup, relying on the superpolynomial simulation framework of Pass [Pas03]. The first work [ABG+21] achieves this relying on subexponential non-interactive witness indistinguishable arguments, the subexponential SXDH assumption, and the existence of a special type of non-interactive non-malleable commitment. The second work [FJK21] additionally achieves concurrent security, and relies on subexponential quantum hardness of the learning-with-errors (LWE) problem, subexponential classical hardness of SXDH, the existence of a subexponentially-secure (classically-hard) indistinguishablity obfuscation (iO) scheme, and time-lock puzzles. This paper focuses on the assumptions necessary to construct secure computation protocols in two rounds without setup, focusing on the subcase of two-party functionalities. In this particular case, we show how to build a two-round, concurrent-secure, two-party computation (2PC) protocol based on a single, standard, post-quantum assumption, namely subexponential hardness of the learning-with-errors (LWE) problem. We note that our protocol is the first two-round concurrent-secure 2PC protocol that does not require the existence of a one-round non-malleable commitment (NMC). Instead, we are able to use the two-round NMCs of [KS17a], which is instantiable from subexponential LWE

Two-Round Concurrent 2PC from Sub-Exponential LWE

Secure computation is a cornerstone of modern cryptography and a rich body of research is devoted to understanding its round complexity. In this work, we consider two-party computation (2PC) protocols (where both parties receive output) that remain secure in the realistic setting where many instances of the protocol are executed in parallel (concurrent security). We obtain a two-round concurrent-secure 2PC protocol based on a single, standard, post-quantum assumption: The subexponential hardness of the learning-with-errors (LWE) problem. Our protocol is in the plain model, i.e., it has no trusted setup, and it is secure in the super-polynomial simulation framework of Pass (EUROCRYPT 2003). Since two rounds are minimal for (concurrent) 2PC, this work resolves the round complexity of concurrent 2PC from standard assumptions. As immediate applications, our work establishes feasibility results for interesting cryptographic primitives, such as the first two-round password authentication key exchange (PAKE) protocol in the plain model and the first two-round concurrent secure computation protocol for quantum circuits (2PQC)

Training Efficient Controllers via Analytic Policy Gradient

Control design for robotic systems is complex and often requires solving an optimization to follow a trajectory accurately. Online optimization approaches like Model Predictive Control (MPC) have been shown to achieve great tracking performance, but require high computing power. Conversely, learning-based offline optimization approaches, such as Reinforcement Learning (RL), allow fast and efficient execution on the robot but hardly match the accuracy of MPC in trajectory tracking tasks. In systems with limited compute, such as aerial vehicles, an accurate controller that is efficient at execution time is imperative. We propose an Analytic Policy Gradient (APG) method to tackle this problem. APG exploits the availability of differentiable simulators by training a controller offline with gradient descent on the tracking error. We address training instabilities that frequently occur with APG through curriculum learning and experiment on a widely used controls benchmark, the CartPole, and two common aerial robots, a quadrotor and a fixed-wing drone. Our proposed method outperforms both model-based and model-free RL methods in terms of tracking error. Concurrently, it achieves similar performance to MPC while requiring more than an order of magnitude less computation time. Our work provides insights into the potential of APG as a promising control method for robotics. To facilitate the exploration of APG, we open-source our code and make it available atgithub.com/lis-epfl/apg_trajectory_tracking