Universally Composable Security With Local Adversaries

The traditional approach to formalizing ideal-model based definitions of security for multi-party protocols models adversaries (both real and ideal) as centralized entities that control all parties that deviate from the protocol. While this centralized-adversary modeling suffices for capturing basic security properties such as secrecy of local inputs and correctness of outputs against coordinated attacks, it turns out to be inadequate for capturing security properties that involve restricting the sharing of information between separate adversarial entities. Indeed, to capture collusion-freeness and and game-theoretic solution concepts, Alwen et.al. [Crypto, 2012] propose a new ideal-model based definitional framework that involves a de-centralized adversary. We propose an alternative framework to that of Alwen et. al. We then observe that our framework allows capturing not only collusion-freeness and game-theoretic solution concepts, but also several other properties that involve the restriction of information flow among adversarial entities. These include some natural flavors of anonymity, deniability, timing separation, and information confinement. We also demonstrate the inability of existing formalisms to capture these properties. We then prove strong composition properties for the proposed framework, and use these properties to demonstrate the security, within the new framework, of two very different protocols for securely evaluating any function of the parties’ inputs

Online Deniability for Multiparty Protocols with Applications to Externally Anonymous Authentication

In the problem of anonymous authentication (Boneh et al. CCS 1999), a sender wishes to authenticate a message to a given recipient in a way that preserves anonymity: the recipient does not know the identity of the sender and only is assured that the sender belongs to some authorized set. Although solutions for the problem exist (for example, by using ring signatures, e.g. Naor, Crypto 2002), they provide no security when the anonymity set is a singleton. This work is motivated by the question of whether there is any type of anonymity possible in this scenario. It turns out that we can still protect the identity of all senders (authorized or not) if we shift our concern from preventing the identity information be revealed to the recipient to preventing it could be revealed to an external entity, other than the recipient. We define a natural functionality which provides such guarantees and we denote it by F_{eaa} for externally anonymous authenticated channel. We argue that any realization of F_{eaa} must be deniable in the sense of Dodis et al. TCC 2009. To prove the deniability of similar primitives, previous work defined ad hoc notions of deniability for each task, and then each notion was showed equivalent to realizing the primitive in the Generalized Universal Composability framework (GUC, Canetti et al. TCC 2007). Instead, we put forward the question of whether deniability can be defined independently from any particular task. We answer this question in the affirmative providing a natural extension of the definition of Dodis et al. for arbitrary multiparty protocols. Furthermore, we show that a protocol satisfies this definition if an only if it realizes the ideal functionality F_{eaa} in the GUC framework. This result enables us to prove that most GUC functionalities we are aware of (and their realizations) are deniable. We conclude by applying our results to the construction of a deniable protocol that realizes F_{eaa}

Private Function Evaluation with Cards

Card-based protocols allow to evaluate an arbitrary fixed Boolean function on a hidden input to obtain a hidden output, without the executer learning anything about either of the two (e.g., [12]). We explore the case where implements a universal function, i.e., is given the encoding ⟨⟩ of a program and an input and computes (⟨⟩,)=(). More concretely, we consider universal circuits, Turing machines, RAM machines, and branching programs, giving secure and conceptually simple card-based protocols in each case. We argue that card-based cryptography can be performed in a setting that is only very weakly interactive, which we call the “surveillance” model. Here, when Alice executes a protocol on the cards, the only task of Bob is to watch that Alice does not illegitimately turn over cards and that she shuffles in a way that nobody knows anything about the total permutation applied to the cards. We believe that because of this very limited interaction, our results can be called program obfuscation. As a tool, we develop a useful sub-protocol $_{II}$↑ that couples the two equal-length sequences , and jointly and obliviously permutes them with the permutation ∈ that lexicographically minimizes (). We argue that this generalizes ideas present in many existing card-based protocols. In fact, AND, XOR, bit copy [37], coupled rotation shuffles [30] and the “permutation division” protocol of [22] can all be expressed as “coupled sort protocols”

Public Randomness Extraction with Ephemeral Roles and Worst-Case Corruptions

We distill a simple information-theoretic model for randomness extraction motivated by the task of generating publicly verifiable randomness in blockchain settings and which is closely related to You-Only-Speak-Once (YOSO) protocols (CRYPTO 2021). With the goal of avoiding denial-of-service attacks, parties speak only once and in sequence by broadcasting a public value and forwarding secret values to future parties. Additionally, an unbounded adversary can corrupt any chosen subset of at most $t$ parties. In contrast, existing YOSO protocols only handle random corruptions. As a notable example, considering worst-case corruptions allows us to reduce trust in the role assignment mechanism, which is assumed to be perfectly random in YOSO. We study the maximum corruption threshold $t$ which allows for unconditional randomness extraction in our model: - With respect to feasibility, we give protocols for $t$ corruptions and $n=6t+1$ or $n=5t$ parties depending on whether the adversary learns secret values forwarded to corrupted parties immediately once they are sent or only once the corrupted party is executed, respectively. Both settings are motivated by practical implementations of secret value forwarding. To design such protocols, we go beyond the committee-based approach that is sufficient for random corruptions in YOSO but turns out to be sub-optimal for chosen corruptions. - To complement our protocols, we show that low-error randomness extraction is impossible with corruption threshold $t$ and $n \leq 4t$ parties in both settings above. This also provides a separation between chosen and random corruptions, since the latter allows for randomness extraction with close to $n/2$ random corruptions

A Compiler of Two-Party Protocols for Composable and Game-Theoretic Security, and Its Application to Oblivious Transfer

In this paper, we consider the following question: Does composing protocols having game-theoretic security result in a secure protocol in the sense of game-theoretic security? In order to discuss the composability of game-theoretic properties, we study security of cryptographic protocols in terms of the universal composability (UC) and game theory simultaneously. The contribution of this paper is the following: (i) We propose a compiler of two-party protocols in the local universal composability (LUC) framework such that it transforms any two-party protocol secure against semi-honest adversaries into a protocol secure against malicious adversaries in the LUC framework; (ii) We consider the application of our compiler to oblivious transfer (OT) protocols, by which we obtain a construction of OT meeting both UC security and game-theoretic security

Information-Theoretic Secure Outsourced Computation in Distributed Systems

Secure multi-party computation (secure MPC) has been established as the de facto paradigm for protecting privacy in distributed computation. One of the earliest secure MPC primitives is the Shamir\u27s secret sharing (SSS) scheme. SSS has many advantages over other popular secure MPC primitives like garbled circuits (GC) -- it provides information-theoretic security guarantee, requires no complex long-integer operations, and often leads to more efficient protocols. Nonetheless, SSS receives less attention in the signal processing community because SSS requires a larger number of honest participants, making it prone to collusion attacks. In this dissertation, I propose an agent-based computing framework using SSS to protect privacy in distributed signal processing. There are three main contributions to this dissertation. First, the proposed computing framework is shown to be significantly more efficient than GC. Second, a novel game-theoretical framework is proposed to analyze different types of collusion attacks. Third, using the proposed game-theoretical framework, specific mechanism designs are developed to deter collusion attacks in a fully distributed manner. Specifically, for a collusion attack with known detectors, I analyze it as games between secret owners and show that the attack can be effectively deterred by an explicit retaliation mechanism. For a general attack without detectors, I expand the scope of the game to include the computing agents and provide deterrence through deceptive collusion requests. The correctness and privacy of the protocols are proved under a covert adversarial model. Our experimental results demonstrate the efficiency of SSS-based protocols and the validity of our mechanism design

On the Orthogonal Vector Problem and the Feasibility of Unconditionally Secure Leakage-Resilient Computation

We consider unconditionally secure leakage resilient two-party computation, where security means that the leakage obtained by an adversary can be simulated using a similar amount of leakage from the private inputs or outputs. A related problem is known as circuit compilation, where there is only one device doing a computation on public input and output. Here the goal is to ensure that the adversary learns only the input/output behaviour of the computation, even given leakage from the internal state of the device. We study these problems in an enhanced version of the ``only computation leaks\u27\u27 model, where the adversary is additionally allowed a bounded amount of {\em global} leakage from the state of the entity under attack. In this model, we show the first unconditionally secure leakage resilient two-party computation protocol. The protocol assumes access to correlated randomness in the form of a functionality \fOrt that outputs pairs of orthogonal vectors $(\vec{u}, \vec{v})$ over some finite field, where the adversary can leak independently from $\vec{u}$ and from $\vec{v}$. We also construct a general circuit compiler secure in the same leakage model. Our constructions work, even if the adversary is allowed to corrupt a constant fraction of the calls to \fOrt and decide which vectors should be output. On the negative side, we show that unconditionally secure two-party computation and circuit compilation are in general impossible in the plain version of our model. For circuit compilation we need a computational assumption to exhibit a function that cannot be securely computed, on the other hand impossibility holds even if global leakage is not allowed. It follows that even a somewhat unreliable version of \fOrt cannot be implemented with unconditional security in the plain leakage model, using classical communication. However, we show that an implementation using quantum communication does exist. In particular, we propose a simple ``prepare-and-measure\u27\u27 type protocol which we show secure using a new result on sampling from a quantum population. Although the protocol may produce a small number of incorrect pairs, this is sufficient for leakage resilient computation by our other results

Securing Multiparty Protocols against the Exposure of Data to Honest Parties

We consider a new adversarial goal in multiparty protocols, where the adversary may corrupt some parties. The goal is to manipulate the view of some honest party in a way, that this honest party learns the private data of some other honest party. The adversary itself might not learn this data at all. This goal, and such attacks are significant because they create a liability to the first honest party to clean its systems from second honest party\u27s data; a task that may be highly non-trivial. Protecting against this goal essentially means achieving security against several non-cooperating adversaries, where all but one adversary are passive and corrupt only a single party. We formalize the adversarial goal by proposing an alternative notion of universal composability. We show how existing, conventionally secure multiparty protocols can be transformed to make them secure against the novel adversarial goal

MPC with Friends and Foes

Classical definitions for secure multiparty computation assume the existence of a single adversarial entity controlling the set of corrupted parties. Intuitively, the definition requires that the view of the adversary, corrupting $t$ parties, in a real-world execution can be simulated by an adversary in an ideal model, where parties interact only via a trusted-party. No restrictions, however, are imposed on the view of honest parties in the protocol, thus, if honest parties obtain information about the private inputs of other honest parties -- it is not counted as a violation of privacy. This is arguably undesirable in many situations that fall into the MPC framework. Nevertheless, there are secure protocols (e.g., the 2-round multiparty protocol of Ishai et al.~[CRYPTO 2010] tolerating a single corrupted party) that instruct the honest parties to reveal their private inputs to all other honest parties (once the malicious party is somehow identified). In this paper, we put forth a new security notion, which we call \textit{FaF-security}, extending the classical notion. In essence, $(t,h^*)$-FaF-security requires the view of a subset of up to $h^*$ honest parties to also be simulatable in the ideal model (in addition to the view of the malicious adversary, corrupting up to $t$ parties). This property should still hold, even if the adversary leaks information to honest parties by sending them non-prescribed messages. We provide a thorough exploration of the new notion, investigating it in relation to a variety of existing security notions. We further investigate the feasibility of achieving FaF-security and show that every functionality can be computed with (computational) $(t,h^*)$-FaF full-security, if and only if $2t+ h^*<m$. Interestingly, the lower-bound result actually shows that even fair FaF-security is impossible in general when $2t+ h^*\ge m$ (surprisingly, the view of the malicious attacker is not used as the trigger for the attack). We also investigate the optimal round complexity for $(t,h^*)$-FaF-secure protocols and give evidence that the leakage of private inputs of honest parties in the protocol of Ishai et al.~[CRYPTO 2010] is inherent. Finally, we investigate the feasibility of statistical/perfect FaF-security, employing the viewpoint used by Fitzi et al.~[ASIACRYPT 1999] for \textit{mixed-adversaries}

Anonymous Point Collection - Improved Models and Security Definitions

This work is a comprehensive, formal treatment of anonymous point collection. The proposed definition does not only provide a strong notion of security and privacy, but also covers features which are important for practical use. An efficient realization is presented and proven to fulfill the proposed definition. The resulting building block is the first one that allows for anonymous two-way transactions, has semi-offline capabilities, yields constant storage size, and is provably secure