Two-Round Password-Based Authenticated Key Exchange from Lattices

International audience

A fast and secure public-key image encryption scheme based on Mordell elliptic curves

Selective opening (SO) security is one of the most important securities of public key encryption (PKE) in a multi-user setting. Even though messages and random coins used in some ciphertexts are leaked, SO security guarantees the confidentiality of the other ciphertexts. Actually, it is shown that there exist PKE schemes which meet the standard security such as indistinguishability against chosen ciphertext attacks (IND-CCA security) but do not meet SO security against chosen ciphertext attacks. Hence, it is important to consider SO security in the multi-user setting. On the other hand, many researchers have studied cryptosystems in the security model where adversaries can submit quantum superposition queries (i.e., quantum queries) to oracles. In particular, IND-CCA secure PKE and KEM schemes in the quantum random oracle model have been intensively studied so far.

Nowadays, Smooth Projective Hash Functions (SPHFs) play an important role in constructing cryptographic tools such as secure Password-based Authenticated Key Exchange (PAKE) protocol in the standard model, oblivious transfer, and zero-knowledge proofs. Specifically, in this article, we focus on constructing PAKE protocol; that is, a kind of key exchange protocol which needs only a low entropy password to produce a cryptographically strong shared session key. In spite of relatively good progress of SPHFs in applications, it seems there has been little effort to build them upon quantum-resistant assumptions such as lattice-based cryptography and code-based cryptography to make them secure against quantum computer attacks. More precisely, there are two proposals based on lattice assumptions that utilize the SPHFs to construct PAKE secured in standard model. Considering quantum-resistant assumptions is less than straightforward and needs some relaxations. In this article, we introduce two new Approximate SPHF (ASPHFs) from error-correcting codes. Upon designing ASPHF, we can construct two efficient PAKE protocols. The security of our protocols could be proved based on the hardness of bounded decoding (BD) problem and learning with parity (LPN) problem in the standard model.

Indistinguishability under chosen-ciphertext attack (IND-CCA) is now considered the de facto security notion for public-key encryption. However, this sometimes offers a stronger security guarantee than what is needed. In this study, the authors consider a weaker security notion, termed as indistinguishability under plaintext-checking attacks (IND-PCA), in which the adversary has only access to an oracle indicating whether or not a given ciphertext encrypts a given message. After formalising this notion, the authors design a new public-key encryption scheme satisfying it. The new scheme is a variant of the Cramer–Shoup encryption scheme with shorter ciphertexts. Its security is also based on the plain decisional Diffie–Hellman (DDH) assumption. Additionally, the algebraic properties of the new scheme allow proving plaintext knowledge using Groth–Sahai non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs or smooth projective hash functions. Finally, as a concrete application, the authors show that, for many password-based authenticated key exchange (PAKE) schemes in the Bellare–Pointcheval–Rogaway security model, they can safely replace the underlying IND-CCA encryption schemes with their new IND-PCA one. By doing so, they reduce the overall communication complexity of these protocols and obtain the most efficient PAKE schemes to date based on plain DDH.

Password-based authenticated key exchange (PAKE) enables two users with shared low-entropy passwords to establish cryptographically strong session keys over insecure networks. At Asiacrypt 2009, Katz and Vaikuntanathan showed a generic three-round PAKE based on any CCA-secure PKE with associated approximate smooth projective hashing (ASPH), which helps to obtain the first PAKE from lattices. In this paper, we give a framework for constructing PAKE from CCA-secure PKE with associated ASPH, which uses only two-round messages by carefully exploiting a splittable property of the underlying PKE and its associated non-adaptive ASPH. We also give a splittable PKE with associated non-adaptive ASPH based on the LWE assumption, which finally allows to instantiate our two-round PAKE framework from lattices.

We introduce the notion of complementary-witness-soundness for a witness indistinguishable proof system. We then present a new general framework for public key encryption schemes, denoted as CWSWI-type encryption, based on a complementary-witness-sound witness indistinguishable (CWSWI) proof system. The construction of a CWSWI-type encryption scheme is relatively straight forward, while the security thereof against adaptive chosen cipher text attack (denoted CCA2) can be rigorously proven. Many existing CCA2 public key encryption schemes can be interpreted as being of CWSWI-type, including the schemes of Lindell, Cramer-Shoup and Peikert-Waters. Thus, our CWSWI approach provides a novel means for designing and analyzing CCA2 secure public key encryption schemes.

A three-party password-based authenticated key exchange (PAKE) protocol allows two clients registered with a trusted server to generate a common cryptographic key from their individual passwords shared only with the server. A key requirement for three-party PAKE protocols is to prevent an adversary from mounting a dictionary attack. This requirement must be met even when the adversary is a malicious (registered) client who can set up normal protocol sessions with other clients. This work revisits three existing three-party PAKE protocols, namely, Guo et al.’s (2008) protocol, Huang’s (2009) protocol, and Lee and Hwang’s (2010) protocol, and demonstrates that these protocols are not secure against offline and/or (undetectable) online dictionary attacks in the presence of a malicious client. The offline dictionary attack we present against Guo et al.’s protocol also applies to other similar protocols including Lee and Hwang’s protocol. We conclude with some suggestions on how to design a three-party PAKE protocol that is resistant against dictionary attacks.

Multivariate public key cryptography is a set of cryptographic schemes built from the NP-hardness of solving quadratic equations over finite fields, amongst which the hidden field equations (HFE) family of schemes remain the most famous. However, the original HFE scheme was insecure, and the follow-up modifications were shown to be still vulnerable to attacks. In this paper, we propose a new variant of the HFE scheme by considering the special equation x2=x defined over the finite field F3 when x=0,1. We observe that the equation can be used to further destroy the special structure of the underlying central map of the HFE scheme. It is shown that the proposed public key encryption scheme is secure against known attacks including the MinRank attack, the algebraic attacks, and the linearization equations attacks. The proposal gains some advantages over the original HFE scheme with respect to the encryption speed and public key size.

In 2005, Hwang et al. proposed a concept of timed-release encryption with pre-open capability (TRE-PC), where a receiver can decrypt a ciphertext not only by using a time-release key which is provided after its release-time, but also using a secret information called a pre-open key provided from a sender even before the release-time. Though there are several concrete constructions of TRE-PC proposed so far, no generic construction has been known. In this paper, we show a generic construciton of TRE-PC. Specifically, we construct a TRE-PC scheme from a chosen-ciphertext secure public key encryption scheme (PKE), a chosen plaintext secure identity-based encryption (IBE) scheme with specific property that we call target collision resistance for randomness , and a one-time signature scheme. Interestingly, our proposed construction of TRE-PC is essentially the same as the generic construciton of (normal) TRE based on multiple encryption of IBE and PKE. As one of the consequences of our result, we can build a TRE-PC scheme secure in the standard model based on weaker assumptions than the ones used by the existing standard model TRE-PC scheme.

A leakage-resilient public-key encryption (PKE) scheme provides security even if an adversary obtains some information on the secret key. In recent years, much attention has been focused on designing provably secure PKE in the presence of key-leakage and almost all the constructions rely on an important building block namely hash proof system (HPS). However, in the setting of adaptive chosen-ciphertext attacks (CCA2), there are not many HPS-based leakage-resilient PKE schemes available. Moreover, most of them have an unsatisfactory leakage rate. In this study, the authors propose a new method of constructing leakage-resilient CCA2-secure PKE scheme from any tag-based strongly universal 2 HPS. The striking advantage of the authors scheme is the leakage rate, which is the best one among all known HPS-based indistinguishability key leakage CCA2-secure constructions. In particular, they present an instantiation under the n -linear assumption. In the cases of n = 1 (resp. n = 2), they actually obtain a decisional Diffie-Hellman (DDH)-based [resp. decisional linear (DLIN)-based] PKE scheme, where the leakage rate can be made to 1/4 (resp. 1/6). The authors DDH-based scheme achieves the best leakage rate among all known DDH-based (Cramer-Shoup-type) schemes. Their DLIN-based scheme is the first one that can achieve leakage of L /6 bits without pairing, where L is the length of the secret key.

By a generic transformation by Canetti, Halevi, and Katz (CHK) every Identity-based encryption (IBE) scheme implies a chosen-ciphertext secure public-key encryption (PKE) scheme. In the same work it is claimed that this transformation maps the two existing IBE schemes to two new and different chosen-ciphertext secure encryption schemes, each with individual advantages over the other.In this work we reconsider one of the two specific instantiations of the CHK transformation (when applied to the “second Boneh/Boyen IBE scheme”). We demonstrate that by applying further simplifications the resulting scheme can be proven secure under a weaker assumption than the underlying IBE scheme.Surprisingly, our simplified scheme nearly converges to a recent encryption scheme due to Boyen, Mei, and Waters which itself was obtained from the other specific instantiation of the CHK transformation (when applied to the “first Boneh/Boyen IBE scheme”). We find this particularly interesting since the two underlying IBE schemes are completely different.The bottom line of this paper is that the claim made by Canetti, Halevi, and Katz needs to be reformulated to: the CHK transformation maps the two known IBE schemes to nearly one single encryption scheme.KeywordsEncryption SchemeMessage Authentication CodeChallenge CiphertextChoose Ciphertext AttackBilinear GroupThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

The public key encryption schemes with semantic security against adaptively chosen cipertext attacks in the standard model suffer from the drawbacks of low efficiency or strong computational assumptions.Concerning these problems,a new provable secure public key encryption scheme was proposed based on the newly introduced d-decisional Diffie-Hellman problem.To obtain the security and efficiency,the methodology of Hash proof system was adopted in the construction and security proof of the scheme.The intractability of the d-decisional Diffie-Hellman problem was between that of the computational Diffie-Hellman problem and decisional Diffie-Hellman problem.The efficiency of the scheme surpassed that of the schemes based on the computational Diffie-Hellman problem and approximated with the schemes based on the decisional Diffie-Hellman problem.Therefore,the proposed scheme has reached a good compromise between efficiency and computational assumption.Moreover,it can select different d for different security demand of applications.

The concept of policy-based cryptography is a promising paradigm for trust establishment and authorization in largescale open environments like the Internet and Mobile Networks. It aims at providing a framework for performing cryptographic operations with respect to policies formalized as monotone Boolean expressions written in standard normal forms. A policy involves conjunctions and disjunctions of conditions where each condition is fulfilled by a digital credential representing the signature of a specific credential issuer on a set of statements about a certain entity. Therefore, an entity fulfills a policy if any only if it has been issued a set of credentials fulfilling the combination of conditions specified by the policy.In this work, we focus on policy-based encryption schemes which allow to encrypt a message according to a policy so that only entities fulfilling the policy are able to decrypt the message. More generally, policy-based encryption belongs to an emerging family of encryption schemes sharing the ability to integrate encryption with access control structures. This ability is mainly enabled by bilinear pairings over elliptic curves and allows for several interesting applications in different contexts.A policy-based encryption scheme has to fulfill two primary requirements: on one hand, provable security under well defined attack models. On the other hand, efficiency, especially when dealing with the conjunctions and disjunctions of credential-based conditions.The contributions of our research work are twofold:1. The standard acceptable notion of security for public-key encryption schemes is indistinguishability against chosen ciphertext attacks. Hence, it is natural to require that a policy-based encryption scheme also satisfies this strong notion of security. However, the definition of this security notion must be adapted to the policy-based setting. Our first contribution is the definition of policy-oriented security model for policy-based encryption schemes as well as the development of an efficient policy-based encryption scheme that is provably secure under our security model in the random oracle model.2. Policy-based encryption schemes may suffer from the key-escrow property i.e. in addition to the legitimate holder of the credentials fulfilling the encryption policy, any collusion of credential issuers who are able to issue a set of credentials fulfilling the policy can decrypt the message. Our second contribution is to address this issue through the notion of policy-based public-key encryption. The latter allows encrypting a message not only with respect to a policy but also according to a public-key so that only an entity fulfilling the policy and having access to the corresponding private-key is able to decrypt the message. We developed a policy-based public-key encryption scheme from bilinear pairings and proved its security under the corresponding security model. Our proposal improves related work in terms of both security and efficiency.

Public-key encryption scheme with optimal continuous leakage resilience