1,835 research outputs found
Signcryption schemes with threshold unsigncryption, and applications
The final publication is available at link.springer.comThe goal of a signcryption scheme is to achieve the same functionalities as encryption and signature together, but in a more efficient way than encrypting and signing separately. To increase security and reliability in some applications, the unsigncryption phase can be distributed among a group of users, through a (t, n)-threshold process. In this work we consider this task of threshold unsigncryption, which has received very few attention from the cryptographic literature up to now (maybe surprisingly, due to its potential applications). First we describe in detail the security requirements that a scheme for such a task should satisfy: existential unforgeability and indistinguishability, under insider chosen message/ciphertext attacks, in a multi-user setting. Then we show that generic constructions of signcryption schemes (by combining encryption and signature schemes) do not offer this level of security in the scenario of threshold unsigncryption. For this reason, we propose two new protocols for threshold unsigncryption, which we prove to be secure, one in the random oracle model and one in the standard model. The two proposed schemes enjoy an additional property that can be very useful. Namely, the unsigncryption protocol can be divided in two phases: a first one where the authenticity of the ciphertext is verified, maybe by a single party; and a second one where the ciphertext is decrypted by a subset of t receivers, without using the identity of the sender. As a consequence, the schemes can be used in applications requiring some level of anonymity, such as electronic auctions.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft
Security of signed ELGamal encryption
Assuming a cryptographically strong cyclic group G of prime order q and a random hash function H, we show that ElGamal encryption with an added Schnorr signature is secure against the adaptive chosen ciphertext attack, in which an attacker can freely use a decryption oracle except for the target ciphertext. We also prove security against the novel one-more-decyption attack. Our security proofs are in a new model, corresponding to a combination of two previously introduced models, the Random Oracle model and the Generic model. The security extends to the distributed threshold version of the scheme. Moreover, we propose a very practical scheme for private information retrieval that is based on blind decryption of ElGamal ciphertexts
A Practical Set-Membership Proof for Privacy-Preserving NFC Mobile Ticketing
To ensure the privacy of users in transport systems, researchers are working
on new protocols providing the best security guarantees while respecting
functional requirements of transport operators. In this paper, we design a
secure NFC m-ticketing protocol for public transport that preserves users'
anonymity and prevents transport operators from tracing their customers' trips.
To this end, we introduce a new practical set-membership proof that does not
require provers nor verifiers (but in a specific scenario for verifiers) to
perform pairing computations. It is therefore particularly suitable for our
(ticketing) setting where provers hold SIM/UICC cards that do not support such
costly computations. We also propose several optimizations of Boneh-Boyen type
signature schemes, which are of independent interest, increasing their
performance and efficiency during NFC transactions. Our m-ticketing protocol
offers greater flexibility compared to previous solutions as it enables the
post-payment and the off-line validation of m-tickets. By implementing a
prototype using a standard NFC SIM card, we show that it fulfils the stringent
functional requirement imposed by transport operators whilst using strong
security parameters. In particular, a validation can be completed in 184.25 ms
when the mobile is switched on, and in 266.52 ms when the mobile is switched
off or its battery is flat
Security of discrete log cryptosystems in the random oracle and the generic model
We introduce novel security proofs that use combinatorial counting arguments rather than reductions to the discrete logarithm or to the Diffie-Hellman problem. Our security results are sharp and clean with no polynomial reduction times involved. We consider a combination of the random oracle model and the generic model. This corresponds to assuming an ideal hash function H given by an oracle and an ideal group of prime order q, where the binary encoding of the group elements is useless for cryptographic attacks In this model, we first show that Schnorr signatures are secure against the one-more signature forgery : A generic adversary performing t generic steps including l sequential interactions with the signer cannot produce l+1 signatures with a better probability than (t 2)/q. We also characterize the different power of sequential and of parallel attacks. Secondly, we prove signed ElGamal encryption is secure against the adaptive chosen ciphertext attack, in which an attacker can arbitrarily use a decryption oracle except for the challenge ciphertext. Moreover, signed ElGamal encryption is secure against the one-more decryption attack: A generic adversary performing t generic steps including l interactions with the decryption oracle cannot distinguish the plaintexts of l + 1 ciphertexts from random strings with a probability exceeding (t 2)/q
Still Wrong Use of Pairings in Cryptography
Several pairing-based cryptographic protocols are recently proposed with a
wide variety of new novel applications including the ones in emerging
technologies like cloud computing, internet of things (IoT), e-health systems
and wearable technologies. There have been however a wide range of incorrect
use of these primitives. The paper of Galbraith, Paterson, and Smart (2006)
pointed out most of the issues related to the incorrect use of pairing-based
cryptography. However, we noticed that some recently proposed applications
still do not use these primitives correctly. This leads to unrealizable,
insecure or too inefficient designs of pairing-based protocols. We observed
that one reason is not being aware of the recent advancements on solving the
discrete logarithm problems in some groups. The main purpose of this article is
to give an understandable, informative, and the most up-to-date criteria for
the correct use of pairing-based cryptography. We thereby deliberately avoid
most of the technical details and rather give special emphasis on the
importance of the correct use of bilinear maps by realizing secure
cryptographic protocols. We list a collection of some recent papers having
wrong security assumptions or realizability/efficiency issues. Finally, we give
a compact and an up-to-date recipe of the correct use of pairings.Comment: 25 page
The chaining lemma and its application
We present a new information-theoretic result which we call the Chaining Lemma. It considers a so-called “chain” of random variables, defined by a source distribution X(0)with high min-entropy and a number (say, t in total) of arbitrary functions (T1,…, Tt) which are applied in succession to that source to generate the chain (Formula presented). Intuitively, the Chaining Lemma guarantees that, if the chain is not too long, then either (i) the entire chain is “highly random”, in that every variable has high min-entropy; or (ii) it is possible to find a point j (1 ≤ j ≤ t) in the chain such that, conditioned on the end of the chain i.e. (Formula presented), the preceding part (Formula presented) remains highly random. We think this is an interesting information-theoretic result which is intuitive but nevertheless requires rigorous case-analysis to prove. We believe that the above lemma will find applications in cryptography. We give an example of this, namely we show an application of the lemma to protect essentially any cryptographic scheme against memory tampering attacks. We allow several tampering requests, the tampering functions can be arbitrary, however, they must be chosen from a bounded size set of functions that is fixed a prior
Efficient and Low-Cost RFID Authentication Schemes
Security in passive resource-constrained Radio Frequency Identification
(RFID) tags is of much interest nowadays. Resistance against illegal tracking,
cloning, timing, and replay attacks are necessary for a secure RFID
authentication scheme. Reader authentication is also necessary to thwart any
illegal attempt to read the tags. With an objective to design a secure and
low-cost RFID authentication protocol, Gene Tsudik proposed a timestamp-based
protocol using symmetric keys, named YA-TRAP*. Although YA-TRAP* achieves its
target security properties, it is susceptible to timing attacks, where the
timestamp to be sent by the reader to the tag can be freely selected by an
adversary. Moreover, in YA-TRAP*, reader authentication is not provided, and a
tag can become inoperative after exceeding its pre-stored threshold timestamp
value. In this paper, we propose two mutual RFID authentication protocols that
aim to improve YA-TRAP* by preventing timing attack, and by providing reader
authentication. Also, a tag is allowed to refresh its pre-stored threshold
value in our protocols, so that it does not become inoperative after exceeding
the threshold. Our protocols also achieve other security properties like
forward security, resistance against cloning, replay, and tracking attacks.
Moreover, the computation and communication costs are kept as low as possible
for the tags. It is important to keep the communication cost as low as possible
when many tags are authenticated in batch-mode. By introducing aggregate
function for the reader-to-server communication, the communication cost is
reduced. We also discuss different possible applications of our protocols. Our
protocols thus capture more security properties and more efficiency than
YA-TRAP*. Finally, we show that our protocols can be implemented using the
current standard low-cost RFID infrastructures.Comment: 21 pages, Journal of Wireless Mobile Networks, Ubiquitous Computing,
and Dependable Applications (JoWUA), Vol 2, No 3, pp. 4-25, 201
Pairing-based identification schemes
We propose four different identification schemes that make use of bilinear
pairings, and prove their security under certain computational assumptions.
Each of the schemes is more efficient and/or more secure than any known
pairing-based identification scheme
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