Universal Forgery and Multiple Forgeries of MergeMAC and Generalized Constructions

This article presents universal forgery and multiple forgeries against MergeMAC that has been recently proposed to fit scenarios where bandwidth is limited and where strict time constraints apply. MergeMAC divides an input message into two parts, $m\|\tilde{m}$, and its tag is computed by $\mathcal{F}( \mathcal{P}_1(m) \oplus \mathcal{P}_2(\tilde{m}) )$, where $\mathcal{P}_1$ and $\mathcal{P}_2$ are PRFs and $\mathcal{F}$ is a public function. The tag size is 64 bits. The designers claim $64$-bit security and imply a risk of accepting beyond-birthday-bound queries. This paper first shows that it is inevitable to limit the number of queries up to the birthday bound, because a generic universal forgery against CBC-like MAC can be adopted to MergeMAC. Afterwards another attack is presented that works with a very few number of queries, 3 queries and $2^{58.6}$ computations of $\mathcal{F}$, by applying a preimage attack against weak $\mathcal{F}$, which breaks the claimed security. The analysis is then generalized to a MergeMAC variant where $\mathcal{F}$ is replaced with a one-way function $\mathcal{H}$. Finally, multiple forgeries are discussed in which the attacker\u27s goal is to improve the ratio of the number of queries to the number of forged tags. It is shown that the attacker obtains tags of $q^2$ messages only by making $2q-1$ queries in the sense of existential forgery, and this is tight when $q^2$ messages have a particular structure. For universal forgery, tags for $3q$ arbitrary chosen messages can be obtained by making $5q$ queries

Data-Independent Memory Hard Functions: New Attacks and Stronger Constructions

Memory-hard functions (MHFs) are a key cryptographic primitive underlying the design of moderately expensive password hashing algorithms and egalitarian proofs of work. Over the past few years several increasingly stringent goals for an MHF have been proposed including the requirement that the MHF have high sequential space-time (ST) complexity, parallel space-time complexity, amortized area-time (aAT) complexity and sustained space complexity. Data-Independent Memory Hard Functions (iMHFs) are of special interest in the context of password hashing as they naturally resist side-channel attacks. iMHFs can be specified using a directed acyclic graph (DAG) $G$ with $N=2^n$ nodes and low indegree and the complexity of the iMHF can be analyzed using a pebbling game. Recently, Alwen et al. [CCS 17] constructed a DAG called DRSample that has aAT complexity at least $\Omega\left( N^2/\log N\right)$. Asymptotically DRSample outperformed all prior iMHF constructions including Argon2i, winner of the password hashing competition (aAT cost $\mathcal{O}\left(N^{1.767}\right)$), though the constants in these bounds are poorly understood. We show that the greedy pebbling strategy of Boneh et al. [ASIACRYPT 16] is particularly effective against DRSample e.g., the aAT cost is $\mathcal{O}\left( N^2/\log N\right)$. In fact, our empirical analysis {\em reverses} the prior conclusion of Alwen et al. that DRSample provides stronger resistance to known pebbling attacks for practical values of $N \leq 2^{24}$. We construct a new iMHF candidate (DRSample+BRG) by using the bit-reversal graph to extend DRSample. We then prove that the construction is asymptotically optimal under every MHF criteria, and we empirically demonstrate that our iMHF provides the best resistance to {\em known} pebbling attacks. For example, we show that any parallel pebbling attack either has aAT cost $\omega(N^2)$ or requires at least $\Omega(N)$ steps with $\Omega(N/\log N)$ pebbles on the DAG. This makes our construction the first practical iMHF with a strong sustained space-complexity guarantee and immediately implies that any parallel pebbling has aAT complexity $\Omega(N^2/\log N)$. We also prove that any sequential pebbling (including the greedy pebbling attack) has aAT cost $\Omega\left( N^2\right)$ and, if a plausible conjecture holds, any parallel pebbling has aAT cost $\Omega(N^2 \log \log N/\log N)$ --- the best possible bound for an iMHF

Protein-Protein Interactions of Tandem Affinity Purified Protein Kinases from Rice

Eighty-eight rice (Oryza sativa) cDNAs encoding rice leaf expressed protein kinases (PKs) were fused to a Tandem Affinity Purification tag (TAP-tag) and expressed in transgenic rice plants. The TAP-tagged PKs and interacting proteins were purified from the T1 progeny of the transgenic rice plants and identified by tandem mass spectrometry. Forty-five TAP-tagged PKs were recovered in this study and thirteen of these were found to interact with other rice proteins with a high probability score. In vivo phosphorylated sites were found for three of the PKs. A comparison of the TAP-tagged data from a combined analysis of 129 TAP-tagged rice protein kinases with a concurrent screen using yeast two hybrid methods identified an evolutionarily new rice protein that interacts with the well conserved cell division cycle 2 (CDC2) protein complex

Identification of Genes Required for Neural-Specific Glycosylation Using Functional Genomics

Glycosylation plays crucial regulatory roles in various biological processes such as development, immunity, and neural functions. For example, α1,3-fucosylation, the addition of a fucose moiety abundant in Drosophila neural cells, is essential for neural development, function, and behavior. However, it remains largely unknown how neural-specific α1,3-fucosylation is regulated. In the present study, we searched for genes involved in the glycosylation of a neural-specific protein using a Drosophila RNAi library. We obtained 109 genes affecting glycosylation that clustered into nine functional groups. Among them, members of the RNA regulation group were enriched by a secondary screen that identified genes specifically regulating α1,3-fucosylation. Further analyses revealed that an RNA–binding protein, second mitotic wave missing (Swm), upregulates expression of the neural-specific glycosyltransferase FucTA and facilitates its mRNA export from the nucleus. This first large-scale genetic screen for glycosylation-related genes has revealed novel regulation of fucTA mRNA in neural cells

Balloon Hashing: A Memory-Hard Function Providing Provable Protection Against Sequential Attacks

We present the Balloon password-hashing algorithm. This is the first practical cryptographic hash function that: (i) has proven memory-hardness properties in the random-oracle model, (ii) uses a password-independent access pattern, and (iii) meets or exceeds the performance of the best heuristically secure password-hashing algorithms. Memory-hard functions require a large amount of working space to evaluate efficiently and when used for password hashing, they dramatically increase the cost of offline dictionary attacks. In this work, we leverage a previously unstudied property of a certain class of graphs (“random sandwich graphs”) to analyze the memory-hardness of the Balloon algorithm. The techniques we develop are general: we also use them to give a proof of security of the scrypt and Argon2i password-hashing functions in the random-oracle model. Our security analysis uses a sequential model of computation, which essentially captures attacks that run on single-core machines. Recent work shows how to use massively parallel special-purpose machines (e.g., with hundreds of cores) to attack Balloon and other memory-hard functions. We discuss these important attacks, which are outside of our adversary model, and propose practical defenses against them. To motivate the need for security proofs in the area of password hashing, we demonstrate and implement a practical attack against Argon2i that successfully evaluates the function with less space than was previously claimed possible. Finally, we use experimental results to compare the performance of the Balloon hashing algorithm to other memory-hard functions