19 research outputs found
Collusion Resistant Watermarking Schemes for Cryptographic Functionalities
A cryptographic watermarking scheme embeds a message into a program while preserving its functionality. Recently, a number of watermarking schemes have been proposed, which are proven secure in the sense that given one marked program, any attempt to remove the embedded message will substantially change its functionality.
In this paper, we formally initiate the study of collusion attacks for watermarking schemes, where the attacker’s goal is to remove the embedded messages given multiple copies of the same program, each with a different embedded message. This is motivated by practical scenarios, where a program may be marked multiple times with different messages.
The results of this work are twofold. First, we examine existing cryptographic watermarking schemes and observe that all of them are vulnerable to collusion attacks. Second, we construct collusion resistant watermarking schemes for various cryptographic functionalities (e.g., pseudorandom function evaluation, decryption, etc.). To achieve our second result, we present a new primitive called puncturable functional encryption scheme, which may be of independent interest
Collusion Resistant Watermarkable PRFs from Standard Assumptions
A software watermarking scheme can embed a message into a program without significantly changing its functionality. Moreover, any attempt to remove the embedded message in a marked program will substantially change the functionality of the program. Prior constructions of watermarking schemes focus on watermarking cryptographic functions, such as pseudorandom function (PRF), public key encryption, etc.
A natural security requirement for watermarking schemes is collusion resistance, where the adversary’s goal is to remove the embedded messages given multiple marked versions of the same program. Currently, this strong security guarantee has been achieved by watermarking schemes for public key cryptographic primitives from standard assumptions (Goyal et al., CRYPTO 2019) and by watermarking schemes for PRFs from indistinguishability obfuscation (Yang et al., ASIACRYPT 2019). However, no collusion resistant watermarking scheme for PRF from standard assumption is known.
In this work, we solve this problem by presenting a generic construction that upgrades a watermarkable PRF without collusion resistance to a collusion resistant one. One appealing feature of our construction is that it can preserve the security properties of the original scheme. For example, if the original scheme has security with extraction queries, the new scheme is also secure with extraction queries. Besides, the new scheme can achieve unforgeability even if the original scheme does not provide this security property. Instantiating our construction with existing watermarking schemes for PRF, we obtain collusion resistant watermarkable PRFs from standard assumptions, offering various security properties
More Efficient Structure-Preserving Signatures - Or: Bypassing the Type-III Lower Bounds
Structure-preserving signatures are an important cryptographic primitive that is useful for the design of modular cryptographic protocols.
It has been proven that structure-preserving signatures (in the most efficient Type-III bilinear group setting) have a lower bound of 3 group elements in the signature (which must include elements from both source groups) and require at least 2 pairing-product equations for verification.
In this paper, we show that such lower bounds can be circumvented. In particular, we define the notion of Unilateral Structure-Preserving Signatures on Diffie-Hellman pairs (USPSDH) which are structure-preserving signatures in the efficient Type-III bilinear group setting with the message space being the set of Diffie-Hellman pairs, in the terminology of Abe et al. (Crypto 2010). The signatures in these schemes are elements of one of the source groups, i.e. unilateral, whereas the verification key elements\u27 are from the other source group. We construct a number of new structure-preserving signature schemes which bypass the Type-III lower bounds and hence they are much more efficient than all existing structure-preserving signature schemes. We also prove optimality of our constructions by proving lower bounds and giving some impossibility results.
Our contribution can be summarized as follows:
\begin{itemize}
\item We construct two optimal randomizable CMA-secure schemes with signatures consisting of only 2 group elements from the first short source group and therefore our signatures are at least half the size of the best existing structure-preserving scheme for unilateral messages in the (most efficient) Type-III setting. Verifying signatures in our schemes requires, besides checking the well-formedness of the message, the evaluation of a single Pairing-Product Equation (PPE) and requires a fewer pairing evaluations than all existing structure-preserving signature schemes in the Type-III setting. Our first scheme has a feature that permits controlled randomizability (combined unforgeability) where the signer can restrict some messages such that signatures on those cannot be re-randomized which might be useful for some applications.
\item We construct optimal strongly unforgeable CMA-secure one-time schemes with signatures consisting of 1 group element, and which can also sign a vector of messages while maintaining the same signature size.
\item We give a one-time strongly unforgeable CMA-secure structure-preserving scheme that signs unilateral messages, i.e. messages in one of the source groups, whose efficiency matches the best existing optimal one-time scheme in every respect.
\item We investigate some lower bounds and prove some impossibility results regarding this variant of structure-preserving signatures.
\item We give an optimal (with signatures consisting of 2 group elements and verification requiring 1 pairing-product equation) fully randomizable CMA-secure partially structure-preserving scheme that simultaneously signs a Diffie-Hellman pair and a vector in .
\item As an example application of one of our schemes, we obtain
efficient instantiations of randomizable weakly blind signatures which do not rely on random oracles.
The latter is a building block that is used, for instance, in constructing Direct Anonymous Attestation (DAA) protocols, which are protocols deployed in practice.
\end{itemize}
Our results offer value along two fronts: On the practical side, our constructions are more efficient than existing ones and thus could lead to more efficient instantiations of many cryptographic protocols. On the theoretical side, our results serve as a proof that many of the lower bounds for the Type-III setting can be circumvented
Further Lower Bounds for Structure-Preserving Signatures in Asymmetric Bilinear Groups
Structure-Preserving Signatures (SPSs) are a useful tool for the design of modular cryptographic protocols. Recent series of works have shown that by limiting the message space of those schemes to the set of Diffie-Hellman (DH) pairs, it is possible to circumvent the known lower bounds in the Type-3 bilinear group setting thus obtaining the shortest signatures consisting of only 2 elements from the shorter source group. It has been shown that such a variant yields efficiency gains for some cryptographic constructions, including attribute-based signatures and direct anonymous attestation. Only the cases of signing a single DH pair or a DH pair and a vector from have been considered. Signing a vector of group elements is required for various applications of SPSs, especially if the aim is to forgo relying on heuristic assumptions.
An open question is whether such an improved lower bound also applies to signing a vector of messages. We answer this question negatively for schemes existentially unforgeable under an adaptive chosen-message attack (EUF-CMA) whereas we answer it positively for schemes existentially unforgeable under a random-message attack (EUF-RMA) and those which are existentially unforgeable under a combined chosen-random-message attack (EUF-CMA-RMA). The latter notion is a leeway between the two former notions where it allows the adversary to adaptively choose part of the message to be signed whereas the remaining part of the message is chosen uniformly at random by the signer.
Another open question is whether strongly existentially unforgeable under an adaptive chosen-message attack (sEUF-CMA) schemes with 2-element signatures exist. We answer this question negatively, proving it is impossible to construct sEUF-CMA schemes with 2-element signatures even if the signature consists of elements from both source groups. On the other hand, we prove that sEUF-RMA and sEUF-CMA-RMA schemes with 2-element (unilateral) signatures are possible by giving constructions for those notions.
Among other things, our findings show a gap between random-message/combined chosen-random-message security and chosen-message security in this setting
Divisible E-Cash from Constrained Pseudo-Random Functions
International audienceElectronic cash (e-cash) is the digital analogue of regular cash which aims at preservingusers’ privacy. Following Chaum’s seminal work, several new features were proposed for e-cash toaddress the practical issues of the original primitive. Among them,divisibilityhas proved very usefulto enable efficient storage and spendings. Unfortunately, it is also very difficult to achieve and, todate, quite a few constructions exist, all of them relying on complex mechanisms that can only beinstantiated in one specific setting. In addition security models are incomplete and proofs sometimeshand-wavy.In this work, we first provide a complete security model for divisible e-cash, and we study the linkswith constrained pseudo-random functions (PRFs), a primitive recently formalized by Boneh andWaters. We exhibit two frameworks of divisible e-cash systems from constrained PRFs achievingsome specific properties: either key homomorphism or delegability. We then formally prove theseframeworks, and address two main issues in previous constructions: two essential security notionswere either not considered at all or not fully proven. Indeed, we introduce the notion ofclearing,which should guarantee that only the recipient of a transaction should be able to do the deposit,and we show theexculpability, that should prevent an honest user to be falsely accused, was wrongin most proofs of the previous constructions. Some can easily be repaired, but this is not the casefor most complex settings such as constructions in the standard model. Consequently, we providethe first construction secure in the standard model, as a direct instantiation of our framework
Watermarking PRFs from Lattices: Stronger Security via Extractable PRFs
A software watermarking scheme enables one to embed a mark (i.e., a message) within a program while preserving the program\u27s functionality. Moreover, there is an extraction algorithm that recovers an embedded message from a program. The main security goal is that it should be difficult to remove the watermark without destroying the functionality of the program. Existing constructions of watermarking focus on watermarking cryptographic functions like pseudorandom functions (PRFs); even in this setting, realizing watermarking from standard assumptions remains difficult. The first lattice-based construction of secret-key watermarking due to Kim and Wu (CRYPTO 2017) only ensures mark-unremovability against an adversary who does not have access to the mark-extraction oracle. The construction of Quach et al. (TCC 2018) achieves the stronger notion of mark-unremovability even if the adversary can make extraction queries, but has the drawback that the watermarking authority (who holds the watermarking secret key) can break pseudorandomness of all PRF keys in the family (including unmarked keys).
In this work, we construct new lattice-based secret-key watermarking schemes for PRFs that both provide unremovability against adversaries that have access to the mark-extraction oracle and offer a strong and meaningful notion of pseudorandomness even against the watermarking authority (i.e., the outputs of unmarked keys are pseudorandom almost everywhere). Moreover, security of several of our schemes can be based on the hardness of computing nearly polynomial approximations to worst-case lattice problems. This is a qualitatively weaker assumption than that needed for existing lattice-based constructions of watermarking (that support message-embedding), all of which require quasi-polynomial approximation factors. Our constructions rely on a new cryptographic primitive called an extractable PRF, which may be of independent interest
Equipping Public-Key Cryptographic Primitives with Watermarking (or: A Hole Is to Watermark)
Program watermarking enables users to embed an arbitrary string called a mark into a program while preserving the functionality of the program. Adversaries cannot remove the mark without destroying the functionality. Although there exist generic constructions of watermarking schemes for public-key cryptographic (PKC) primitives, those schemes are constructed from scratch and not efficient.
In this work, we present a general framework to equip a broad class of PKC primitives with an efficient watermarking scheme. The class consists of PKC primitives that have a canonical all-but-one (ABO) reduction. Canonical ABO reductions are standard techniques to prove selective security of PKC primitives, where adversaries must commit a target attribute at the beginning of the security game. Thus, we can obtain watermarking schemes for many existing efficient PKC schemes from standard cryptographic assumptions via our framework. Most well-known selectively secure PKC schemes have canonical ABO reductions. Notably, we can achieve watermarking for public-key encryption whose ciphertexts and secret-keys are constant-size, and that is chosen-ciphertext secure.
Our approach accommodates the canonical ABO reduction technique to the puncturable pseudorandom function (PRF) technique, which is used to achieve watermarkable PRFs. We find that canonical ABO reductions are compatible with such puncturable PRF-based watermarking schemes
Watermarking Public-Key Cryptographic Primitives
A software watermarking scheme enables users to embed a message or mark within a program while preserving its functionality. Moreover, it is difficult for an adversary to remove a watermark from a marked program without corrupting its behavior. Existing constructions of software watermarking from standard assumptions have focused exclusively on watermarking pseudorandom functions (PRFs).
In this work, we study watermarking public-key primitives such as the signing key of a digital signature scheme or the decryption key of a public-key (predicate) encryption scheme. While watermarking public-key primitives might seem more challenging than watermarking PRFs, we show how to construct watermarkable variants of these notions while only relying on standard, and oftentimes, minimal, assumptions. Our watermarkable signature scheme relies only on the minimal assumption that one-way functions exist and satisfies ideal properties such as public marking, public mark-extraction, and full collusion resistance. Our watermarkable public-key encryption schemes are built using techniques developed for the closely-related problem of traitor tracing. Notably, we obtain fully collusion resistant watermarkable attribute-based encryption in the private-key setting from the standard learning with errors assumption and a bounded collusion resistant watermarkable predicate encryption scheme with public mark-extraction and public marking from the minimal assumption that public-key encryption exists
Lattice-Based Blind Signatures, Revisited
We observe that all previously known lattice-based blind signature schemes
contain subtle flaws in their security proofs (e.g., Rückert, ASIACRYPT \u2708) or can be attacked (e.g., BLAZE by Alkadri et al., FC \u2720).
Motivated by this, we revisit the problem of constructing blind signatures from standard lattice assumptions.
We propose a new three-round lattice-based blind signature scheme whose security can be proved, in the random oracle model, from the standard SIS assumption. Our starting point is a modified version of the (insecure) BLAZE scheme, which itself is based Lyubashevsky\u27s three-round identification scheme combined with a new aborting technique to reduce the correctness error.
Our proof builds upon and extends the recent modular framework for blind signatures of Hauck, Kiltz, and Loss
(EUROCRYPT \u2719). It also introduces several new techniques to overcome the additional challenges posed by the correctness error which is inherent to all lattice-based constructions.
While our construction is mostly of theoretical interest, we believe it to be an important stepping stone for future works in this area
The impact of bilingualism on the narrative ability and the executive functions of children with autism spectrum disorders
While there is ample evidence that monolingual children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) face difficulties with narrative story-telling and executive functions (EF), there is considerable uncertainty about how bilingualism impacts these skills in autism. The current study explores the effect of bilingualism on the narrative and EF skills of forty 7-to-12-year-old bilingual and monolingual children with ASD, as well as forty age-matched bilingual and monolingual children of typical development (TD). Narrative production data were elicited using the Edmonton Narrative Norms Instrument (ENNI; Schneider et al., 2005), which was developed to measure narrative production at a microstructural and macrostructural level. The same children were administered two EF tasks, namely, a global-local visual attention task and a 2-back working memory task. In story-telling, bilingual children with ASD achieved higher scores than monolingual children with ASD on story structure complexity and use of adverbial clauses, and they tended to use significantly fewer ambiguous referential forms than their monolingual peers with ASD. In the global-local task, bilingual children with ASD were faster and more accurate in global trials than monolingual children with ASD, who tended to be more susceptible to interference from locally presented information than the other experimental groups. Higher accuracy and faster response times were also observed for bilingual children with ASD in the 2-back task. Further correlation analyses between the story-telling and EF tasks revealed that bilingual children with ASD drew on a broader range of EF in narrative production than their monolingual peers. The overall findings reveal that bilingual children with ASD outperformed their monolingual peers with ASD in both the microstructure and macrostructure of their narrative production, as well as in their visual attention and working memory skills. © 2020 Elsevier Inc