1,909 research outputs found
Using quantum key distribution for cryptographic purposes: a survey
The appealing feature of quantum key distribution (QKD), from a cryptographic
viewpoint, is the ability to prove the information-theoretic security (ITS) of
the established keys. As a key establishment primitive, QKD however does not
provide a standalone security service in its own: the secret keys established
by QKD are in general then used by a subsequent cryptographic applications for
which the requirements, the context of use and the security properties can
vary. It is therefore important, in the perspective of integrating QKD in
security infrastructures, to analyze how QKD can be combined with other
cryptographic primitives. The purpose of this survey article, which is mostly
centered on European research results, is to contribute to such an analysis. We
first review and compare the properties of the existing key establishment
techniques, QKD being one of them. We then study more specifically two generic
scenarios related to the practical use of QKD in cryptographic infrastructures:
1) using QKD as a key renewal technique for a symmetric cipher over a
point-to-point link; 2) using QKD in a network containing many users with the
objective of offering any-to-any key establishment service. We discuss the
constraints as well as the potential interest of using QKD in these contexts.
We finally give an overview of challenges relative to the development of QKD
technology that also constitute potential avenues for cryptographic research.Comment: Revised version of the SECOQC White Paper. Published in the special
issue on QKD of TCS, Theoretical Computer Science (2014), pp. 62-8
A Survey on Homomorphic Encryption Schemes: Theory and Implementation
Legacy encryption systems depend on sharing a key (public or private) among
the peers involved in exchanging an encrypted message. However, this approach
poses privacy concerns. Especially with popular cloud services, the control
over the privacy of the sensitive data is lost. Even when the keys are not
shared, the encrypted material is shared with a third party that does not
necessarily need to access the content. Moreover, untrusted servers, providers,
and cloud operators can keep identifying elements of users long after users end
the relationship with the services. Indeed, Homomorphic Encryption (HE), a
special kind of encryption scheme, can address these concerns as it allows any
third party to operate on the encrypted data without decrypting it in advance.
Although this extremely useful feature of the HE scheme has been known for over
30 years, the first plausible and achievable Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE)
scheme, which allows any computable function to perform on the encrypted data,
was introduced by Craig Gentry in 2009. Even though this was a major
achievement, different implementations so far demonstrated that FHE still needs
to be improved significantly to be practical on every platform. First, we
present the basics of HE and the details of the well-known Partially
Homomorphic Encryption (PHE) and Somewhat Homomorphic Encryption (SWHE), which
are important pillars of achieving FHE. Then, the main FHE families, which have
become the base for the other follow-up FHE schemes are presented. Furthermore,
the implementations and recent improvements in Gentry-type FHE schemes are also
surveyed. Finally, further research directions are discussed. This survey is
intended to give a clear knowledge and foundation to researchers and
practitioners interested in knowing, applying, as well as extending the state
of the art HE, PHE, SWHE, and FHE systems.Comment: - Updated. (October 6, 2017) - This paper is an early draft of the
survey that is being submitted to ACM CSUR and has been uploaded to arXiv for
feedback from stakeholder
Group theory in cryptography
This paper is a guide for the pure mathematician who would like to know more
about cryptography based on group theory. The paper gives a brief overview of
the subject, and provides pointers to good textbooks, key research papers and
recent survey papers in the area.Comment: 25 pages References updated, and a few extra references added. Minor
typographical changes. To appear in Proceedings of Groups St Andrews 2009 in
Bath, U
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