A New Paradigm for Public-Key Functional Encryption for Degree-2 Polynomials

We give the first public-key functional encryption that supports the generation of functional decryption keys for degree-2 polynomials, with succinct ciphertexts, whose semi-adaptive simulation-based security is proven under standard assumptions. At the heart of our new paradigm lies a so-called partially function-hiding functional encryption scheme for inner products, which admits public-key instances, and that is sufficient to build functional encryption for degree-2 polynomials. Doing so, we improve upon prior works, such as the constructions from Lin (CRYPTO 17) or Ananth Sahai (EUROCRYPT 17), both of which rely on function-hiding inner product FE, that can only exist in the private-key setting. The simplicity of our construction yields the most efficient FE for quadratic functions from standard assumptions (even those satisfying a weaker security notion). The interest of our methodology is that the FE for quadratic functions that builds upon any partially function-hiding FE for inner products inherits the security properties of the latter. In particular, we build a partially function-hiding FE for inner products that enjoys simulation security, in the semi-adaptive setting, where the challenge sent from the adversary can be chosen adaptively after seeing the public key (but before corrupting functional decryption keys). This is in contrast from prior public-key FE for quadratic functions from Baltico et al. (CRYPTO 17), which only achieved an indistinguishability-based, selective security. As a bonus, we show that we can obtain security against Chosen-Ciphertext Attacks straightforwardly. Even though this is the de facto security notion for encryption, this was not achieved by prior functional encryption schemes for quadratic functions, where the generic Fujisaki Okamoto transformation (CRYPTO 99) does not apply

Simple and Efficient FE for Quadratic Functions

This paper presents the first functional encryption schemes for quadratic functions (or degree-2 polynomials) achieving simulation-based security in the semi-adaptive model with constant-size secret key. The unique prior construction with the same security guarantee by Gay [PKC 20] has secret keys of size linear in the message size. They also enjoy shorter ciphertexts: - our first scheme is based on bilateral DLIN (decisional linear) assumption as Gay\u27s scheme and the ciphertext is 15% shorter; - our second scheme based on SXDH assumption and bilateral DLIN assumption is more efficient; it has 67% shorter ciphertext than previous SXDH-based scheme with selective indistinguishability security by Baltico et al. [CRYPTO 17]; the efficiency is comparable to their second scheme in the generic group model. Technically, we roughly combine Wee\u27s ``secret-key-to-public-key\u27\u27 compiler [TCC 17] with Gay\u27s paradigm [PKC 20]. We avoid (partial) function-hiding inner-product functional encryption used in Gay\u27s work and make our schemes conceptually simpler

Ad Hoc Multi-Input Functional Encryption

Consider sources that supply sensitive data to an aggregator. Standard encryption only hides the data from eavesdroppers, but using specialized encryption one can hope to hide the data (to the extent possible) from the aggregator itself. For flexibility and security, we envision schemes that allow sources to supply encrypted data, such that at any point a dynamically-chosen subset of sources can allow an agreed-upon joint function of their data to be computed by the aggregator. A primitive called multi-input functional encryption (MIFE), due to Goldwasser et al. (EUROCRYPT 2014), comes close, but has two main limitations: - it requires trust in a third party, who is able to decrypt all the data, and - it requires function arity to be fixed at setup time and to be equal to the number of parties. To drop these limitations, we introduce a new notion of ad hoc MIFE. In our setting, each source generates its own public key and issues individual, function-specific secret keys to an aggregator. For successful decryption, an aggregator must obtain a separate key from each source whose ciphertext is being computed upon. The aggregator could obtain multiple such secret-keys from a user corresponding to functions of varying arity. For this primitive, we obtain the following results: - We show that standard MIFE for general functions can be bootstrapped to ad hoc MIFE for free, i.e. without making any additional assumption. - We provide a direct construction of ad hoc MIFE for the inner product functionality based on the Learning with Errors (LWE) assumption. This yields the first construction of this natural primitive based on a standard assumption. At a technical level, our results are obtained by combining standard MIFE schemes and two-round secure multiparty computation (MPC) protocols in novel ways highlighting an interesting interplay between MIFE and two-round MPC

Predicate Encryption for Circuits from LWE

In predicate encryption, a ciphertext is associated with descriptive attribute values x in addition to a plaintext μ, and a secret key is associated with a predicate f. Decryption returns plaintext μ if and only if f(x)=1. Moreover, security of predicate encryption guarantees that an adversary learns nothing about the attribute x or the plaintext μ from a ciphertext, given arbitrary many secret keys that are not authorized to decrypt the ciphertext individually. We construct a leveled predicate encryption scheme for all circuits, assuming the hardness of the subexponential learning with errors (LWE) problem. That is, for any polynomial function d=d(λ), we construct a predicate encryption scheme for the class of all circuits with depth bounded by d(λ), where λ is the security parameter.Microsoft Corporation (PhD Fellowship)Northrop Grumman Cybersecurity Research ConsortiumUnited States. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Grant FA8750-11-2-0225)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Awards CNS-1350619)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Awards CNS-1413920)Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (Fellowship)Microsoft (Faculty Fellowship

Unbounded Predicate Inner Product Functional Encryption from Pairings

Predicate inner product functional encryption (P-IPFE) is essentially attribute-based IPFE (AB-IPFE) which additionally hides attributes associated to ciphertexts. In a P-IPFE, a message x is encrypted under an attribute w and a secret key is generated for a pair (y, v) such that recovery of ⟨ x, y⟩ requires the vectors w, v to satisfy a linear relation. We call a P-IPFE unbounded if it can encrypt unbounded length attributes and message vectors. ∙ zero predicate IPFE. We construct the first unbounded zero predicate IPFE (UZP-IPFE) which recovers ⟨ x, y⟩ if ⟨ w, v⟩ = 0 . This construction is inspired by the unbounded IPFE of Tomida and Takashima (ASIACRYPT 2018) and the unbounded zero inner product encryption of Okamoto and Takashima (ASIACRYPT 2012). The UZP-IPFE stands secure against general attackers capable of decrypting the challenge ciphertext. Concretely, it provides full attribute-hiding security in the indistinguishability-based semi-adaptive model under the standard symmetric external Diffie–Hellman assumption. ∙ non-zero predicate IPFE. We present the first unbounded non-zero predicate IPFE (UNP-IPFE) that successfully recovers ⟨ x, y⟩ if ⟨ w, v⟩ ≠ 0 . We generically transform an unbounded quadratic FE (UQFE) scheme to weak attribute-hiding UNP-IPFE in both public and secret key setting. Interestingly, our secret key simulation secure UNP-IPFE has succinct secret keys and is constructed from a novel succinct UQFE that we build in the random oracle model. We leave the problem of constructing a succinct public key UNP-IPFE or UQFE in the standard model as an important open problem

Functional Encryption as Mediated Obfuscation

We introduce a new model for program obfuscation, called mediated obfuscation. A mediated obfuscation is a 3-party protocol for evaluating an obfuscated program that requires minimal interaction and limited trust. The party who originally supplies the obfuscated program need not be online when the client wants to evaluate the program. A semi-trusted third-party mediator allows the client to evaluate the program, while learning nothing about the obfuscated program or the client’s inputs and outputs. Mediated obfuscation would provide the ability for a software vendor to safely outsource the less savory aspects (like accounting of usage statistics, and remaining online to facilitate access) of “renting out” access to proprietary software. We give security definitions for this new obfuscation paradigm, and then present a simple and generic construction based on functional encryption. If a functional encryption scheme supports decryption functionality F (m, k), then our construction yields a mediated obfuscation of the class of functions {F (m, ·) | m}. In our construction, the interaction between the client and the mediator is minimal (much more efficient than a general- purpose multi-party computation protocol). Instantiating with existing FE constructions, we achieve obfuscation for point-functions with output (under a strong “virtual black-box” notion of security), and a general feasibility result for obfuscating conjunctive normal form and disjunctive normal form formulae (under a weaker “semantic” notion of security). Finally, we use mediated obfuscation to illustrate a connection between worst-case and average-case static obfuscation. In short, an average-case (static) obfuscation of some component of a suitable functional encryption scheme yields a worst-case (static) obfuscation for a related class of functions. We use this connection to demonstrate new impossibility results for average-case (static) obfuscation