Quantum authentication with key recycling

We show that a family of quantum authentication protocols introduced in [Barnum et al., FOCS 2002] can be used to construct a secure quantum channel and additionally recycle all of the secret key if the message is successfully authenticated, and recycle part of the key if tampering is detected. We give a full security proof that constructs the secure channel given only insecure noisy channels and a shared secret key. We also prove that the number of recycled key bits is optimal for this family of protocols, i.e., there exists an adversarial strategy to obtain all non-recycled bits. Previous works recycled less key and only gave partial security proofs, since they did not consider all possible distinguishers (environments) that may be used to distinguish the real setting from the ideal secure quantum channel and secret key resource.Comment: 38+17 pages, 13 figures. v2: constructed ideal secure channel and secret key resource have been slightly redefined; also added a proof in the appendix for quantum authentication without key recycling that has better parameters and only requires weak purity testing code

Finding Safety in Numbers with Secure Allegation Escrows

For fear of retribution, the victim of a crime may be willing to report it only if other victims of the same perpetrator also step forward. Common examples include 1) identifying oneself as the victim of sexual harassment, especially by a person in a position of authority or 2) accusing an influential politician, an authoritarian government, or ones own employer of corruption. To handle such situations, legal literature has proposed the concept of an allegation escrow: a neutral third-party that collects allegations anonymously, matches them against each other, and de-anonymizes allegers only after de-anonymity thresholds (in terms of number of co-allegers), pre-specified by the allegers, are reached. An allegation escrow can be realized as a single trusted third party; however, this party must be trusted to keep the identity of the alleger and content of the allegation private. To address this problem, this paper introduces Secure Allegation Escrows (SAE, pronounced "say"). A SAE is a group of parties with independent interests and motives, acting jointly as an escrow for collecting allegations from individuals, matching the allegations, and de-anonymizing the allegations when designated thresholds are reached. By design, SAEs provide a very strong property: No less than a majority of parties constituting a SAE can de-anonymize or disclose the content of an allegation without a sufficient number of matching allegations (even in collusion with any number of other allegers). Once a sufficient number of matching allegations exist, the join escrow discloses the allegation with the allegers' identities. We describe how SAEs can be constructed using a novel authentication protocol and a novel allegation matching and bucketing algorithm, provide formal proofs of the security of our constructions, and evaluate a prototype implementation, demonstrating feasibility in practice.Comment: To appear in NDSS 2020. New version includes improvements to writing and proof. The protocol is unchange

The cyber security learning and research environment

This report outlines the design and configuration of the Cyber Security Learning and Research Environment (CLARE). It explains how such a system can be implemented with minimal hardware either on a single machine or across multiple machines. Moreover, details of the design of the components that constitute the environment are provided alongside sufficient implementation and configuration documentation to allow for replication of the environment