A Tamper and Leakage Resilient von Neumann Architecture

We present a universal framework for tamper and leakage resilient computation on a von Neumann Random Access Architecture (RAM in short). The RAM has one CPU that accesses a storage, which we call the disk. The disk is subject to leakage and tampering. So is the bus connecting the CPU to the disk. We assume that the CPU is leakage and tamper-free. For a fixed value of the security parameter, the CPU has constant size. Therefore the code of the program to be executed is stored on the disk, i.e., we consider a von Neumann architecture. The most prominent consequence of this is that the code of the program executed will be subject to tampering. We construct a compiler for this architecture which transforms any keyed primitive into a RAM program where the key is encoded and stored on the disk along with the program to evaluate the primitive on that key. Our compiler only assumes the existence of a so-called continuous non-malleable code, and it only needs black-box access to such a code. No further (cryptographic) assumptions are needed. This in particular means that given an information theoretic code, the overall construction is information theoretic secure. Although it is required that the CPU is tamper and leakage proof, its design is independent of the actual primitive being computed and its internal storage is non-persistent, i.e., all secret registers are reset between invocations. Hence, our result can be interpreted as reducing the problem of shielding arbitrary complex computations to protecting a single, simple yet universal component

Efficient non-malleable codes and key derivation for poly-size tampering circuits

Non-malleable codes, defined by Dziembowski, Pietrzak, and Wichs (ICS '10), provide roughly the following guarantee: if a codeword c encoding some message x is tampered to c' = f(c) such that c' ≠ c , then the tampered message x' contained in c' reveals no information about x. The non-malleable codes have applications to immunizing cryptosystems against tampering attacks and related-key attacks. One cannot have an efficient non-malleable code that protects against all efficient tampering functions f. However, in this paper we show 'the next best thing': for any polynomial bound s given a-priori, there is an efficient non-malleable code that protects against all tampering functions f computable by a circuit of size s. More generally, for any family of tampering functions F of size F ≤ 2s , there is an efficient non-malleable code that protects against all f in F . The rate of our codes, defined as the ratio of message to codeword size, approaches 1. Our results are information-theoretic and our main proof technique relies on a careful probabilistic method argument using limited independence. As a result, we get an efficiently samplable family of efficient codes, such that a random member of the family is non-malleable with overwhelming probability. Alternatively, we can view the result as providing an efficient non-malleable code in the 'common reference string' model. We also introduce a new notion of non-malleable key derivation, which uses randomness x to derive a secret key y = h(x) in such a way that, even if x is tampered to a different value x' = f(x) , the derived key y' = h(x') does not reveal any information about y. Our results for non-malleable key derivation are analogous to those for non-malleable codes. As a useful tool in our analysis, we rely on the notion of 'leakage-resilient storage' of Davì, Dziembowski, and Venturi (SCN '10), and, as a result of independent interest, we also significantly improve on the parameters of such schemes

REST - Why it became the new norm on the web

REST became the go to approach when it comes to large scale distributed systems on, or outside the World Wide Web. This paper aims to give a brief overview of what REST is and what its main draws and benefits are. Secondly, I will showcase the implementation of REST using HTTP and why this approach became as popular as it is today. Based on my research I concluded that REST’s advantages in scalability, coupling, performance and its seamless integration with HTTP enabled it to rightfully overtake classic RPC based approaches

On the Non-malleability of the Fiat-Shamir Transform

The Fiat-Shamir transform is a well studied paradigm for removing interaction from public-coin protocols. We investigate whether the resulting non-interactive zero-knowledge (NIZK) proof systems also exhibit non-malleability properties that have up to now only been studied for NIZK proof systems in the common reference string model: first, we formally define simulation soundness and a weak form of simulation extraction in the random oracle model (ROM). Second, we show that in the ROM the Fiat-Shamir transform meets these properties under lenient conditions. A consequence of our result is that, in the ROM, we obtain truly efficient non malleable NIZK proof systems essentially for free. Our definitions are sufficient for instantiating the Naor-Yung paradigm for CCA2-secure encryption, as well as a generic construction for signature schemes from hard relations and simulation-extractable NIZK proof systems. These two constructions are interesting as the former preserves both the leakage resilience and key-dependent message security of the underlying CPA-secure encryption scheme, while the latter lifts the leakage resilience of the hard relation to the leakage resilience of the resulting signature scheme

Lower Bounds for Off-Chain Protocols: Exploring the Limits of Plasma

Blockchain is a disruptive new technology introduced around a decade ago. It can be viewed as a method for recording timestamped transactions in a public database. Most of blockchain protocols do not scale well, i.e., they cannot process quickly large amounts of transactions. A natural idea to deal with this problem is to use the blockchain only as a timestamping service, i.e., to hash several transactions $\mathit{tx}_1,\ldots,\mathit{tx}_m$ into one short string, and just put this string on the blockchain, while at the same time posting the hashed transactions $\mathit{tx}_1,\ldots,\mathit{tx}_m$ to some public place on the Internet (``off-chain\u27\u27). In this way the transactions $\mathit{tx}_i$ remain timestamped, but the amount of data put on the blockchain is greatly reduced. This idea was introduced in 2017 under the name \emph{Plasma} by Poon and Buterin. Shortly after this proposal, several variants of Plasma have been proposed. They are typically built on top of the Ethereum blockchain, as they strongly rely on so-called \emph{smart contracts} (in order to resolve disputes between the users if some of them start cheating). Plasmas are an example of so-called \emph{off-chain protocols}. In this work we initiate the study of the inherent limitations of Plasma protocols. More concretely, we show that in every Plasma system the adversary can either (a) force the honest parties to communicate a lot with the blockchain, even though they did not intend to (this is traditionally called \emph{mass exit}); or (b) an honest party that wants to leave the system needs to quickly communicate large amounts of data to the blockchain. What makes these attacks particularly hard to handle in real life is that these attacks do not have so-called \emph{uniquely attributable faults}, i.e.~the smart contract cannot determine which party is malicious, and hence cannot force it to pay the fees for the blockchain interaction. An important implication of our result is that the benefits of two of the most prominent Plasma types, called \emph{Plasma Cash} and \emph{Fungible Plasma}, cannot be achieved simultaneously. Besides of the direct implications on real-life cryptocurrency research, we believe that this work may open up a new line of theoretical research, as, up to our knowledge, this is the first work that provides an impossibility result in the area of off-chain protocols

Large-Scale Non-Interactive Threshold Cryptosystems in the YOSO Model

A $(t,n)$-public key threshold cryptosystem allows distributing the execution of a cryptographic task among a set of $n$ parties by splitting the secret key required for the computation into $n$ shares. A subset of at least $t+1$ honest parties is required to execute the task of the cryptosystem correctly, while security is guaranteed as long as at most $t < \frac{n}{2}$ parties are corrupted. Unfortunately, traditional threshold cryptosystems do not scale well, when executed at large-scale (e.g., in the Internet-environment). In such settings, a possible approach is to select a subset of $n$ players (called a committee) out of the entire universe of $N\gg n$ parties to run the protocol. If done naively, however, this means that the adversary\u27s corruption power does not scale with $N$ as otherwise, the adversary would be able to corrupt the entire committee. A beautiful solution for this problem is given by Benhamouda et al. (TCC 2020) who present a novel form of secret sharing, where the efficiency of the protocol is \emph{independent} of $N$, but the adversarial corruption power \emph{scales} with $N$ (a.k.a. fully mobile adversary). They achieve this through a novel mechanism that guarantees parties in a committee to stay anonymous -- also referred to as the YOSO (You Only Speak Once) model -- until they start to interact within the protocol. In this work, we initiate the study of large-scale threshold cryptography in the YOSO model of communication. We formalize and present novel protocols for distributed key generation, threshold encryption, and signature schemes that guarantee security in large-scale environments. A key challenge in our analysis is that we cannot use the secret sharing protocol of Benhamouda et al. as a black-box to construct our schemes, and instead we require a more generalized version, which may be of independent interest. Finally, we show how our protocols can be concretely instantiated in the YOSO model, and discuss interesting applications of our schemes

Individual Cryptography

We initiate a formal study of individual cryptography. Informally speaking, an algorithm $\mathsf{Alg}$ is individual if, in every implementation of $\mathsf{Alg}$, there always exists an individual user with full knowledge of the cryptographic data $S$ used by $\mathsf{Alg}$. In particular, it should be infeasible to design implementations of this algorithm that would hide $S$ by distributing it between a group of parties using an MPC protocol or outsourcing it to a trusted execution environment. We define and construct two primitives in this model. The first one, called proofs of individual knowledge , is a tool for proving that a given message is fully known to a single ( individual ) machine on the Internet, i.e., it cannot be shared between a group of parties. The second one, dubbed individual secret sharing , is a scheme for sharing a secret $S$ between a group of parties so that the parties have no knowledge of $S$ as long as they do not reconstruct it. The reconstruction ensures that if the shareholders attempt to collude, one of them will learn the secret entirely. Individual secret sharing has applications for preventing collusion in secret sharing. A central technique for constructing individual cryptographic primitives is the concept of MPC hardness. MPC hardness precludes an adversary from completing a cryptographic task in a distributed fashion within a specific time frame

Efficient Algorithms for Broadcast and Consensus Based on Proofs of Work

Inspired by the astonishing success of cryptocurrencies, most notably the Bitcoin system, several recent works have focused on the design of robust blockchain-style protocols that work in a peer-to-peer setting such as the Internet. In contrast to the setting traditionally considered in multiparty computation (MPC), in these systems, honesty is measured by computing power instead of requiring that only a certain fraction of parties is controlled by the adversary. This provides a potential countermeasure against the so-called Sybil attack, where an adversary creates fake identities, thereby easily taking over the majority of parties in the system. In this work we design protocols for Broadcast and Byzantine agreement that are secure under the assumption that the majority of computing power is controlled by the honest parties and for the first time have expected constant round complexity. This is in contrast to earlier works (Crypto\u2715, ePrint\u2714) which have round complexities that scale linearly with the number n of parties; an undesirable feature in a P2P environment with potentially thousands of users. In addition, our main protocol which runs in quasi-constant rounds, introduces novel ideas that significantly decrease communication complexity. Concretely, this is achieved by using an appropriate time-locked encryption scheme and by structuring the parties into a network of so-called cliques. Note: This article contains incorrect claims. Some of its contributions were subsumed by eprint article 2022/82

Long Paper: Provable Secure Parallel Gadgets

Side-channel attacks are a fundamental threat to the security of cryptographic implementations. One of the most prominent countermeasures against side-channel attacks is masking, where each intermediate value of the computation is secret shared, thereby concealing the computation\u27s sensitive information. An important security model to study the security of masking schemes is the random probing model, in which the adversary obtains each intermediate value of the computation with some probability $p$. To construct secure masking schemes, an important building block is the refreshing gadget, which updates the randomness of the secret shared intermediate values. Recently, Dziembowski, Faust, and Zebrowski (ASIACRYPT\u2719) analyzed the security of a simple refreshing gadget by using a new technique called the leakage diagram. In this work, we follow the approach of Dziembowski et al. and significantly improve its methodology. Concretely, we refine the notion of a leakage diagram via so-called dependency graphs, and show how to use this technique for arbitrary complex circuits via composition results and approximation techniques. To illustrate the power of our new techniques, as a case study, we designed provably secure parallel gadgets for the random probing model, and adapted the ISW multiplication such that all gadgets can be parallelized. Finally, we evaluate concrete security levels, and show how our new methodology can further improve the concrete security level of masking schemes. This results in a compiler provable secure up to a noise level of $O({1})$ for affine circuits and $O({1}/{\sqrt{n}})$ in general

Private Circuits III: Hardware Trojan-Resilience via Testing Amplification

Security against hardware trojans is currently becoming an essential ingredient to ensure trust in information systems. A variety of solutions have been introduced to reach this goal, ranging from reactive (i.e., detection-based) to preventive (i.e., trying to make the insertion of a trojan more difficult for the adversary). In this paper, we show how testing (which is a typical detection tool) can be used to state concrete security guarantees for preventive approaches to trojan-resilience. For this purpose, we build on and formalize two important previous works which introduced ``input scrambling and ``split manufacturing as countermeasures to hardware trojans. Using these ingredients, we present a generic compiler that can transform any circuit into a trojan-resilient one, for which we can state quantitative security guarantees on the number of correct executions of the circuit thanks to a new tool denoted as ``testing amplification . Compared to previous works, our threat model covers an extended range of hardware trojans while we stick with the goal of minimizing the number of honest elements in our transformed circuits. Since transformed circuits essentially correspond to redundant multiparty computations of the target functionality, they also allow reasonably efficient implementations, which can be further optimized if specialized to certain cryptographic primitives and security goals