A Framework for Efficient Adaptively Secure Composable Oblivious Transfer in the ROM

Oblivious Transfer (OT) is a fundamental cryptographic protocol that finds a number of applications, in particular, as an essential building block for two-party and multi-party computation. We construct a round-optimal (2 rounds) universally composable (UC) protocol for oblivious transfer secure against active adaptive adversaries from any OW-CPA secure public-key encryption scheme with certain properties in the random oracle model (ROM). In terms of computation, our protocol only requires the generation of a public/secret-key pair, two encryption operations and one decryption operation, apart from a few calls to the random oracle. In~terms of communication, our protocol only requires the transfer of one public-key, two ciphertexts, and three binary strings of roughly the same size as the message. Next, we show how to instantiate our construction under the low noise LPN, McEliece, QC-MDPC, LWE, and CDH assumptions. Our instantiations based on the low noise LPN, McEliece, and QC-MDPC assumptions are the first UC-secure OT protocols based on coding assumptions to achieve: 1) adaptive security, 2) optimal round complexity, 3) low communication and computational complexities. Previous results in this setting only achieved static security and used costly cut-and-choose techniques.Our instantiation based on CDH achieves adaptive security at the small cost of communicating only two more group elements as compared to the gap-DH based Simplest OT protocol of Chou and Orlandi (Latincrypt 15), which only achieves static security in the ROM

OPRFs from Isogenies: Designs and Analysis

Oblivious Pseudorandom Functions are an elementary building block in cryptographic and privacy-preserving applications. However, while there are numerous pre-quantum secure OPRF constructions, few options exist in a post-quantum secure setting. Isogeny group actions and the associated low bandwidth seem like a promising candidate to construct a quantum-resistant OPRF. While there have been relevant attacks on isogeny-related hardness assumptions, the commutative CSIDH is unaffected. In this work, we propose OPUS, a novel OPRF with small communication complexity, requiring only CSIDH as the security assumption. Our results also revisit the Naor-Reingold OPRF from CSIDH and show how to efficiently compute offline evaluations. Additionally, we analyze a previous proposal of a CSIDH-based instantiation of the Naor-Reingold construction. We report several issues with the straightforward instantiation of the protocol and propose mitigations to address those shortcomings. Our mitigations require additional hardness assumptions and more expensive computations but result in a competitive protocol with low communication complexity and few rounds. Our comparison against the state of the art shows that OPUS and the repaired, generic construction are competitive with other proposals in terms of speed and communication size. More concretely, OPUS achieves almost two orders of magnitude less communication overhead compared to the next-best lattice-based OPRF at the cost of higher latency and higher computational cost

The performance of Group Diffie-Hellman paradigms: a software framework and analysis

A mobile computing environment typically involves groups of small, low-power devices interconnected through a mobile and dynamic network. Attempts to secure communication over these “ad-hoc” networks must be scalable to conserve the minimal resources of mobile devices as network sizes grow. In this project, the scalability of differing Group Diffie-Hellman security key generation implementations is examined. In theory, the implementation utilizing a data structure with the lowest theoretical run-time complexity for building the Diffie-Hellman group should prove the most scalable experimentally. A common modular framework was implemented to support generic Group Diffie-Hellman key agreement implementations abstracted from the underlying data structure and traversal mechanism. For comparison, linear, tree-based, and hypercubic Group Diffie-Hellman topologies were implemented and tested. Studies were conducted upon the results to compare the experimental scalability of each implementation to the other implementations as well as the theoretic predictions. The results indicate that the benefits of implementations with low theoretic-complexity are rarely experienced in smaller networks (less than 100 nodes,) and conversely implementations with high theoretic-complexities become unsuitable in larger networks (more than 100 nodes.) These experimental results match the theoretical predictions based on the mathematical properties of each implementation. Since mobile ad-hoc networks are typically small, less efficient, less complex implementations of Group Diffie-Hellman key agreement will suit most needs, however larger networks will require more efficient implementations

Contributions to Securing Software Updates in IoT

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a large network of connected devices. In IoT, devices can communicate with each other or back-end systems to transfer data or perform assigned tasks. Communication protocols used in IoT depend on target applications but usually require low bandwidth. On the other hand, IoT devices are constrained, having limited resources, including memory, power, and computational resources. Considering these limitations in IoT environments, it is difficult to implement best security practices. Consequently, network attacks can threaten devices or the data they transfer. Thus it is crucial to react quickly to emerging vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities should be mitigated by firmware updates or other necessary updates securely. Since IoT devices usually connect to the network wirelessly, such updates can be performed Over-The-Air (OTA). This dissertation presents contributions to enable secure OTA software updates in IoT. In order to perform secure updates, vulnerabilities must first be identified and assessed. In this dissertation, first, we present our contribution to designing a maturity model for vulnerability handling. Next, we analyze and compare common communication protocols and security practices regarding energy consumption. Finally, we describe our designed lightweight protocol for OTA updates targeting constrained IoT devices. IoT devices and back-end systems often use incompatible protocols that are unable to interoperate securely. This dissertation also includes our contribution to designing a secure protocol translator for IoT. This translation is performed inside a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) with TLS interception. This dissertation also contains our contribution to key management and key distribution in IoT networks. In performing secure software updates, the IoT devices can be grouped since the updates target a large number of devices. Thus, prior to deploying updates, a group key needs to be established among group members. In this dissertation, we present our designed secure group key establishment scheme. Symmetric key cryptography can help to save IoT device resources at the cost of increased key management complexity. This trade-off can be improved by integrating IoT networks with cloud computing and Software Defined Networking (SDN).In this dissertation, we use SDN in cloud networks to provision symmetric keys efficiently and securely. These pieces together help software developers and maintainers identify vulnerabilities, provision secret keys, and perform lightweight secure OTA updates. Furthermore, they help devices and systems with incompatible protocols to be able to interoperate

Efficient identity-based threshold signature scheme from bilinear pairings in the standard model

We propose a new identity-based threshold signature (IBTHS) scheme from bilinear pairings enjoying the following advantages in efficiency, security and functionality. The round-complexity of the threshold signing protocol is optimal since each party pays no other communication cost except broadcasting one single message. The computational complexity of the threshold signing procedure is considerably low since there appears no other time-consuming pairing except two pairings for verifying each signature shares. The communication channel requirement of the threshold signing procedure is the lowest since the broadcast channel among signers is enough. It is proved secure with optimal resilience in the standard model. It is the private key associated with an identity rather than a master key of the Public Key Generator (PKG) that is shared among signature generation servers. All these excellent properties are due to our new basic technique by which the private key in the bilinear group is indirectly shared through simply sharing an element in the finite field

Reconfigurable Security: Edge Computing-based Framework for IoT

In various scenarios, achieving security between IoT devices is challenging since the devices may have different dedicated communication standards, resource constraints as well as various applications. In this article, we first provide requirements and existing solutions for IoT security. We then introduce a new reconfigurable security framework based on edge computing, which utilizes a near-user edge device, i.e., security agent, to simplify key management and offload the computational costs of security algorithms at IoT devices. This framework is designed to overcome the challenges including high computation costs, low flexibility in key management, and low compatibility in deploying new security algorithms in IoT, especially when adopting advanced cryptographic primitives. We also provide the design principles of the reconfigurable security framework, the exemplary security protocols for anonymous authentication and secure data access control, and the performance analysis in terms of feasibility and usability. The reconfigurable security framework paves a new way to strength IoT security by edge computing.Comment: under submission to possible journal publication

AnonPri: A Secure Anonymous Private Authentication Protocol for RFID Systems

Privacy preservation in RFID systems is a very important issue in modern day world. Privacy activists have been worried about the invasion of user privacy while using various RFID systems and services. Hence, significant efforts have been made to design RFID systems that preserve users\u27 privacy. Majority of the privacy preserving protocols for RFID systems require the reader to search all tags in the system in order to identify a single RFID tag which not efficient for large scale systems. In order to achieve high-speed authentication in large-scale RFID systems, researchers propose tree-based approaches, in which any pair of tags share a number of key components. Another technique is to perform group-based authentication that improves the tradeoff between scalability and privacy by dividing the tags into a number of groups. This novel authentication scheme ensures privacy of the tags. However, the level of privacy provided by the scheme decreases as more and more tags are compromised. To address this issue, in this paper, we propose a group based anonymous private authentication protocol (AnonPri) that provides higher level of privacy than the above mentioned group based scheme and achieves better efficiency (in terms of providing privacy) than the approaches that prompt the reader to perform an exhaustive search. Our protocol guarantees that the adversary cannot link the tag responses even if she can learn the identifier of the tags. Our evaluation results demonstrates that the level of privacy provided by AnonPri is higher than that of the group based authentication technique