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

THRIVE: Threshold Homomorphic encryption based secure and privacy preserving bIometric VErification system

In this paper, we propose a new biometric verification and template protection system which we call the THRIVE system. The system includes novel enrollment and authentication protocols based on threshold homomorphic cryptosystem where the private key is shared between a user and the verifier. In the THRIVE system, only encrypted binary biometric templates are stored in the database and verification is performed via homomorphically randomized templates, thus, original templates are never revealed during the authentication stage. The THRIVE system is designed for the malicious model where the cheating party may arbitrarily deviate from the protocol specification. Since threshold homomorphic encryption scheme is used, a malicious database owner cannot perform decryption on encrypted templates of the users in the database. Therefore, security of the THRIVE system is enhanced using a two-factor authentication scheme involving the user's private key and the biometric data. We prove security and privacy preservation capability of the proposed system in the simulation-based model with no assumption. The proposed system is suitable for applications where the user does not want to reveal her biometrics to the verifier in plain form but she needs to proof her physical presence by using biometrics. The system can be used with any biometric modality and biometric feature extraction scheme whose output templates can be binarized. The overall connection time for the proposed THRIVE system is estimated to be 336 ms on average for 256-bit biohash vectors on a desktop PC running with quad-core 3.2 GHz CPUs at 10 Mbit/s up/down link connection speed. Consequently, the proposed system can be efficiently used in real life applications

How to securely replicate services (preliminary version)

A method is presented for constructing replicated services that retain their availability and integrity despite several servers and clients being corrupted by an intruder, in addition to others failing benignly. More precisely, a service is replicated by 'n' servers in such a way that a correct client will accept a correct server's response if, for some prespecified parameter, k, at least k servers are correct and fewer than k servers are correct. The issue of maintaining causality among client requests is also addressed. A security breach resulting from an intruder's ability to effect a violation of causality in the sequence of requests processed by the service is illustrated. An approach to counter this problem is proposed that requires that fewer than k servers are corrupt and, to ensure liveness, that k is less than or = n - 2t, where t is the assumed maximum total number of both corruptions and benign failures suffered by servers in any system run. An important and novel feature of these schemes is that the client need not be able to identify or authenticate even a single server. Instead, the client is required only to possess at most two public keys for the service

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

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

On Decoding Schemes for the MDPC-McEliece Cryptosystem

Recently, it has been shown how McEliece public-key cryptosystems based on moderate-density parity-check (MDPC) codes allow for very compact keys compared to variants based on other code families. In this paper, classical (iterative) decoding schemes for MPDC codes are considered. The algorithms are analyzed with respect to their error-correction capability as well as their resilience against a recently proposed reaction-based key-recovery attack on a variant of the MDPC-McEliece cryptosystem by Guo, Johansson and Stankovski (GJS). New message-passing decoding algorithms are presented and analyzed. Two proposed decoding algorithms have an improved error-correction performance compared to existing hard-decision decoding schemes and are resilient against the GJS reaction-based attack for an appropriate choice of the algorithm's parameters. Finally, a modified belief propagation decoding algorithm that is resilient against the GJS reaction-based attack is presented