Volume 14, Issue 1

We describe a framework for constructing an efficient non-interactive key exchange (NIKE) protocol for n parties for any n ≥ 2. Our approach is based on the problem of computing isogenies between isogenous elliptic curves, which is believed to be difficult. We do not obtain a working protocol because of a missing step that is currently an open mathematical problem. What we need to complete our protocol is an efficient algorithm that takes as input an abelian variety presented as a product of isogenous elliptic curves, and outputs an isomorphism invariant of the abelian variety. Our framework builds a cryptographic invariant map , which is a new primitive closely related to a cryptographic multilinear map, but whose range does not necessarily have a group structure. Nevertheless, we show that a cryptographic invariant map can be used to build several cryptographic primitives, including NIKE, that were previously constructed from multilinear maps and indistinguishability obfuscation.

We discuss how to recover a secret bitstring given partial information obtained during a computation over that string, assuming the computation is a deterministic algorithm processing the secret bits sequentially. That abstract situation models certain types of side-channel attacks against discrete logarithm and RSA-based cryptosystems, where the adversary obtains information not on the secret exponent directly, but instead on the group or ring element that varies at each step of the exponentiation algorithm. Our main result shows that for a leakage of a single bit per iteration, under suitable statistical independence assumptions, one can recover the whole secret bitstring in polynomial time. We also discuss how to cope with imperfect leakage, extend the model to k -bit leaks, and show how our algorithm yields attacks on popular cryptosystems such as (EC)DSA.

We initiate the study of a new class of polynomials which we call quasi-subfield polynomials. First, we show that this class of polynomials could lead to more efficient attacks for the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem via the index calculus approach. Specifically, we use these polynomials to construct factor bases for the index calculus approach and we provide explicit complexity bounds. Next, we investigate the existence of quasi-subfield polynomials.

In a recent paper the authors and their collaborators proposed a new hard problem, called the finite field isomorphism problem , and they used it to construct a fully homomorphic encryption scheme. In this paper, we investigate how one might build a digital signature scheme from this new problem. Intuitively, the hidden field isomorphism allows us to convert short vectors in the underlying lattice of one field into generic looking vectors in an isomorphic field.

We introduce a new homomorphic encryption scheme that is natively capable of computing with complex numbers. This is done by generalizing recent work of Chen, Laine, Player and Xia, who modified the Fan–Vercauteren scheme by replacing the integral plaintext modulus t by a linear polynomial X − b . Our generalization studies plaintext moduli of the form X m + b . Our construction significantly reduces the noise growth in comparison to the original FV scheme, so much deeper arithmetic circuits can be homomorphically executed.

We propose a new FHE scheme F-NTRU that adopts the flattening technique proposed in GSW to derive an NTRU based scheme that (similar to GSW) does not require evaluation keys or key switching. Our scheme eliminates the decision small polynomial ratio assumption but relies only on the standard R-LWE assumption. It uses wide key distributions, and hence is immune to Subfield Lattice Attack. In practice, our scheme achieves competitive timings compared to the existing schemes. We are able to compute a homomorphic multiplication in 24.4 msec and 76.0 msec for 5 and 30 levels, respectively, without amortization. Furthermore, our scheme features small ciphertexts, e.g. 2376 KB for 30 levels. The assurance gained by using wide key distributions along with the message space flexibility of the scheme, i.e. bits, binary polynomials, and integers with a large message space, allows the use of the proposed scheme in a wide array of applications.

In recent years, the block Korkine-Zolotarev (BKZ) and its variants such as BKZ 2.0 have been used as de facto algorithms to estimate the security of a lattice-based cryptosystem. In 2017, DeepBKZ was proposed as a mathematical improvement of BKZ, which calls LLL with deep insertions (DeepLLL) as a subroutine alternative to LLL. DeepBKZ can find a short lattice vector by smaller blocksizes than BKZ. In this paper, we develop a self-dual variant of DeepBKZ, as in the work of Micciancio and Walter for self-dual BKZ. Like DeepBKZ, our self-dual DeepBKZ calls both DeepLLL and its dual variant as main subroutines in order to accelerate to find a very short lattice vector. We also report experimental results of DeepBKZ and our self-dual DeepBKZ for random bases on the Darmstadt SVP challenge.

Cryptographic primitives from coding theory are some of the most promising candidates for NIST’s Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization process. In this paper, we introduce a variety of techniques to improve operations on dyadic matrices, a particular type of symmetric matrices that appear in the automorphism group of certain linear codes. Besides the independent interest, these techniques find an immediate application in practice. In fact, one of the candidates for the Key Exchange functionality, called DAGS, makes use of quasi-dyadic matrices to provide compact keys for the scheme.

Overstretched NTRU is a variant of NTRU with a large modulus. Recent lattice subfield and subring attacks have broken suggested parameters for several schemes. There are a number of conflicting claims in the literature over which attack has the best performance. These claims are typically based on experiments more than analysis. In this paper, we argue that comparisons should focus on the lattice dimension used in the attack. We give evidence, both analytically and experimentally, that the subring attack finds shorter vectors and thus is expected to succeed with a smaller dimension lattice than the subfield attack for the same problem parameters, and also to succeed with a smaller modulus when the lattice dimension is fixed.

We consider the problem of producing an efficient, practical, quantum-resistant non-interactive key exchange (NIKE) protocol based on Supersingular Isogeny Diffie-Hellman (SIDH). An attack of Galbraith, Petit, Shani and Ti rules out the use of naïve forms of the SIDH construction for this application, as they showed that an adversary can recover private key information when supplying an honest party with malformed public keys. Subsequently, Azarderakhsh, Jao and Leonardi presented a method for overcoming this attack using multiple instances of the SIDH protocol, but which increases the costs associated with performing a key exchange by factors of up to several thousand at typical security levels. In this paper, we present two new techniques to reduce the cost of SIDH-based NIKE, with various possible tradeoffs between key size and computational cost.

We present a quantum algorithm which computes group action inverses of the complex multiplication group action on isogenous ordinary elliptic curves, using subexponential time, but only polynomial quantum space. One application of this algorithm is that it can be used to find the private key from the public key in the isogeny-based CRS and CSIDH cryptosystems. Prior claims by Childs, Jao, and Soukharev of such a polynomial quantum space algorithm for this problem are false; our algorithm (along with contemporaneous, independent work by Biasse, Iezzi, and Jacobson) is the first such result.

Number-Theoretic Methods in Cryptology (NutMiC) is a bi-annual series of conferences that waslaunched in 2017. Its goal is to spur collaborations between cryptographers and number-theorists and to encourage progress on the number-theoretic hard problems used in cryptology. The publishing model for the series is also mixing the traditions of the cryptography and number theory communities. Articles were accepted for presentation at the conference by a scientific commitee and werereviewed again at a slower pace for inclusion in the journal post-proceedings. In 2019, the conference took place at the Institut de Mathématiques de Jussieu, Sorbonne University,Paris. The event was organized in collaboration with the international association for cryptologic research (IACR) and supported by the European Union’s H2020 Program under grant agreement number ERC-669891. This support allowed us to have low registration costs and offer easy access to all interested researchers. We were glad to have the participation of five internationally recognized invited speakers who greatly contributed to the success of the conference. Nutmic 2019 Co-Chairs, Antoine Joux and Jacek Pomykała

We introduce a general framework encompassing the main hard problems emerging in lattice-based cryptography, which naturally includes the recently proposed Mersenne prime cryptosystem, but also problems coming from code-based cryptography. The framework allows to easily instantiate new hard problems and to automatically construct plausibly post-quantum secure primitives from them. As a first basic application, we introduce two new hard problems and the corresponding encryption schemes. Concretely, we study generalisations of hard problems such as SIS, LWE and NTRU to free modules over quotients of ℤ[ X ] by ideals of the form ( f , g ), where f is a monic polynomial and g ∈ ℤ[ X ] is a ciphertext modulus coprime to f . For trivial modules (i.e. of rank one), the case f = X n + 1 and g = q ∈ ℤ >1 corresponds to ring-LWE, ring-SIS and NTRU, while the choices f = X n – 1 and g = X – 2 essentially cover the recently proposed Mersenne prime cryptosystems. At the other extreme, when considering modules of large rank and letting deg( f ) = 1, one recovers the framework of LWE and SIS.

At Crypto 2018, Aggarwal, Joux, Prakash and Santha (AJPS) described a new public-key encryption scheme based on Mersenne numbers. Shortly after the publication of the cryptosystem, Beunardeau et al. described an attack with complexity 𝓞(2 2 h ). In this paper, we describe an improved attack with complexity 𝓞(2 1.75 h ).

This paper introduces new p r q -based one-way functions and companion signature schemes. The new signature schemes are interesting because they do not belong to the two common design blueprints, which are the inversion of a trapdoor permutation and the Fiat–Shamir transform. In the basic signature scheme, the signer generates multiple RSA-like moduli n i = p i 2 q i and keeps their factors secret. The signature is a bounded-size prime whose Jacobi symbols with respect to the n i ’s match the message digest. The generalized signature schemes replace the Jacobi symbol with higher-power residue symbols. Given of their very unique design, the proposed signature schemes seem to be overlooked “missing species” in the corpus of known signature algorithms.

We present a large class of new Zémor-Tillich type hash functions whose target space is the finite group GL 2 (𝔽 p n ) for any prime p and power n . To do so, we use a novel group-theoretic approach that uses Tits’ “Ping-Pong Lemma” to outline conditions under which a set of matrices in PGL 2 (𝔽 p (( x ))) generates a free group. The hash functions we form are secure against known attacks, and simultaneously preserve many of the desired features of the Zémor-Tillich hash function. In particular, our hash functions retain the mall modifications property .

Due to its shorter key size, elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) is gaining more and more popularity. However, if not properly implemented, the resulting cryptosystems may be susceptible to fault attacks. Over the past few years, several techniques for secure implementations have been published. This paper revisits the ring extension method and its adaptation to the elliptic curve setting.

In 2018 Takashima proposed a version of Charles, Goren and Lauter’s hash function using Richelot isogenies, starting from a genus-2 curve that allows for all subsequent arithmetic to be performed over a quadratic finite field 𝔽 p 2 . In 2019 Flynn and Ti pointed out that Takashima’s hash function is insecure due to the existence of small isogeny cycles. We revisit the construction and show that it can be repaired by imposing a simple restriction, which moreover clarifies the security analysis. The runtime of the resulting hash function is dominated by the extraction of 3 square roots for every block of 3 bits of the message, as compared to one square root per bit in the elliptic curve case; however in our setting the extractions can be parallelized and are done in a finite field whose bit size is reduced by a factor 3. Along the way we argue that the full supersingular isogeny graph is the wrong context in which to study higher-dimensional analogues of Charles, Goren and Lauter’s hash function, and advocate the use of the superspecial subgraph, which is the natural framework in which to view Takashima’s 𝔽 p 2 -friendly starting curve.

We give a 4-list algorithm for solving the Elliptic Curve Discrete Logarithm (ECDLP) over some quadratic field 𝔽 p 2 . Using the representation technique, we reduce ECDLP to a multivariate polynomial zero testing problem. Our solution of this problem using bivariate polynomial multi-evaluation yields a p 1.314 -algorithm for ECDLP. While this is inferior to Pollard’s Rho algorithm with square root (in the field size) complexity 𝓞( p ), it still has the potential to open a path to an o ( p )-algorithm for ECDLP, since all involved lists are of size as small as p34,$\begin{array}{} p^{\frac 3 4}, \end{array}$ only their computation is yet too costly.

We give an effective version with explicit constants of the large sieve inequality for imaginary quadratic fields. Explicit results of this kind are useful for estimating the computational complexity of algorithms which generate elements, whose norm is a rational prime, in an arithmetic progression of the corresponding ring of integers.

This paper proposes a practical hybrid solution for combining and switching between three popular Ring-LWE-based FHE schemes: TFHE, B/FV and HEAAN. This is achieved by first mapping the different plaintext spaces to a common algebraic structure and then by applying efficient switching algorithms. This approach has many practical applications. First and foremost, it becomes an integral tool for the recent standardization initiatives of homomorphic schemes and common APIs. Then, it can be used in many real-life scenarios where operations of different nature and not achievable within a single FHE scheme have to be performed and where it is important to efficiently switch from one scheme to another. Finally, as a byproduct of our analysis we introduce the notion of a FHE module structure, that generalizes the notion of the external product, but can certainly be of independent interest in future research in FHE.

In a recent paper devoted to fault analysis of elliptic curve-based signature schemes, Takahashi et al. (TCHES 2018) described several attacks, one of which assumed an equidistribution property that can be informally stated as follows: given an elliptic curve E over 𝔽 q in Weierstrass form and a large subgroup H ⊂ E (𝔽 q ) generated by G ( x G , y G ), the points in E (𝔽 q ) whose x -coordinates are obtained from x G by randomly flipping a fixed, sufficiently long substring of bits (and rejecting cases when the resulting value does not correspond to a point in E (𝔽 q )) are close to uniformly distributed among the cosets modulo H . The goal of this note is to formally state, prove and quantify (a variant of) that property, and in particular establish sufficient bounds on the size of the subgroup and on the length of the substring of bits for it to hold. The proof relies on bounds for character sums on elliptic curves established by Kohel and Shparlinski (ANTS–IV).

We describe a reduction of the problem of factorization of integers n ≤ x in polynomial-time (log x ) M + O (1) to computing Euler’s totient function, with exceptions of at most x O (1/ M ) composite integers that cannot be factored at all, and at most x exp − cM(loglog⁡ x)3(logloglog⁡ x)2$\begin{array}{} \displaystyle \left(-\frac{c_M(\log\log x)^3}{(\log\log\log x)^2}\right) \end{array}$ integers that cannot be factored completely. The problem of factoring square-free integers n is similarly reduced to that of computing a multiple D of ϕ ( n ), where D ≪ exp((log x ) O (1) ), with the exception of at most x O (1/ M ) integers that cannot be factored at all, in particular O ( x 1/ M ) integers of the form n = pq that cannot be factored.

One family of candidates to build a post-quantum cryptosystem upon relies on euclidean lattices. In order to make such cryptosystems more efficient, one can consider special lattices with an additional algebraic structure such as ideal lattices. Ideal lattices can be seen as ideals in a number field. However recent progress in both quantum and classical computing showed that such cryptosystems can be cryptanalysed efficiently over some number fields. It is therefore important to study the security of such cryptosystems for other number fields in order to have a better understanding of the complexity of the underlying mathematical problems. We study in this paper the case of multicubic fields.

The approximate greatest common divisor problem (ACD) and its variants have been used to construct many cryptographic primitives. In particular, the variants of the ACD problem based on Chinese remainder theorem (CRT) are being used in the constructions of a batch fully homomorphic encryption to encrypt multiple messages in one ciphertext. Despite the utility of the CRT-variant scheme, the algorithms that secures its security foundation have not been probed well enough. In this paper, we propose two algorithms and the results of experiments in which the proposed algorithms were used to solve the variant problem. Both algorithms take the same time complexity 2O~ (γ (η − ρ )2)$\begin{array}{} \displaystyle 2^{\tilde{O}(\frac{\gamma}{(\eta-\rho)^2})} \end{array}$ up to a polynomial factor to solve the variant problem for the bit size of samples γ , secret primes η , and error bound ρ . Our algorithm gives the first parameter condition related to η and γ size. From the results of the experiments, it has been proved that the proposed algorithms work well both in theoretical and experimental terms.

We introduce a category of 𝓞-oriented supersingular elliptic curves and derive properties of the associated oriented and nonoriented ℓ -isogeny supersingular isogeny graphs. As an application we introduce an oriented supersingular isogeny Diffie-Hellman protocol (OSIDH), analogous to the supersingular isogeny Diffie-Hellman (SIDH) protocol and generalizing the commutative supersingular isogeny Diffie-Hellman (CSIDH) protocol.

Many public-key cryptosystems and, more generally, cryptographic protocols, use group exponentiations as important primitive operations. To expand the applicability of these solutions to computationally weaker devices, it has been advocated that a computationally weaker client (i.e., capable of performing a relatively small number of modular multiplications) delegates such primitive operations to a computationally stronger server. Important requirements for such delegation protocols include privacy of the client’s input exponent and security of the client’s output, in the sense of detecting, except for very small probability, any malicious server’s attempt to convince the client of an incorrect exponentiation result. Only recently, efficient protocols for the delegation of a fixed-based exponentiation, over cyclic and RSA-type groups with certain properties, have been presented and proved to satisfy both requirements. In this paper we show that a product of many fixed-base exponentiations, over a cyclic groups with certain properties, can be privately and securely delegated by keeping the client’s online number of modular multiplications only slightly larger than in the delegation of a single exponentiation. We use this result to show the first delegations of entire cryptographic schemes: the well-known digital signature schemes by El-Gamal, Schnorr and Okamoto, over the q -order subgroup in ℤ p , for p , q primes, as well as their variants based on elliptic curves. Previous efficient delegation results were limited to the delegation of single algorithms within cryptographic schemes.

Since Semaev introduced summation polynomials in 2004, a number of studies have been devoted to improving the index calculus method for solving the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem (ECDLP) with better complexity than generic methods such as Pollard’s rho method and the baby-step and giant-step method (BSGS). In this paper, we provide a deep analysis of Gröbner basis computation for solving polynomial systems appearing in the point decomposition problem (PDP) in Semaev’s naive index calculus method. Our analysis relies on linear algebra under simple statistical assumptions on summation polynomials. We show that the ideal derived from PDP has a special structure and Gröbner basis computation for the ideal is regarded as an extension of the extended Euclidean algorithm. This enables us to obtain a lower bound on the cost of Gröbner basis computation. With the lower bound, we prove that the naive index calculus method cannot be more efficient than generic methods.

An elementary proof that the equation x 2 n + y 2 n = z 2 n can not have any non-zero positive integer solutions when n is an integer ≥ 2 is presented. To prove that the equation has no integer solutions it is first hypothesized that the equation has integer solutions. The absence of any integer solutions of the equation is justified by contradicting the hypothesis.

The concept of the semigroup action problem (SAP) was first introduced by Monico in 2002. Monico explained in his paper that the discrete logarithm problem (DLP) can be generalized to SAP. After defining the action problem in a semigroup, the concept was extended using different mathematical structures. In this paper, we discuss the concept of SAP and present a detailed survey of the work which has been done using it in public-key cryptography.

Outsourcing computation has gained significant popularity in recent years due to the development of cloud computing and mobile services. In a basic outsourcing model, a client delegates computation of a function f on an input x to a server. There are two main security requirements in this setting: guaranteeing the server performs the computation correctly, and protecting the client’s input (and hence the function value) from the server. The verifiable computation model of Gennaro, Gentry and Parno achieves the above requirements, but the resulting schemes lack efficiency. This is due to the use of computationally expensive primitives such as fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) and garbled circuits, and the need to represent f as a Boolean circuit. Also, the security model does not allow verification queries, which implies the server cannot learn if the client accepts the computation result. This is a weak security model that does not match many real life scenarios. In this paper, we construct efficient (i.e., without using FHE, garbled circuits and Boolean circuit representations) verifiable computation schemes that provide privacy for the client’s input, and prove their security in a strong model that allows verification queries. We first propose a transformation that provides input privacy for a number of existing schemes for verifiable delegation of multivariate polynomial f over a finite field. Our transformation is based on noisy encoding of x and keeps x semantically secure under the noisy curve reconstruction (CR) assumption. We then propose a construction for verifiable delegation of matrix-vector multiplication, where the delegated function f is a matrix and the input to the function is a vector. The scheme uses PRFs with amortized closed-form efficiency and achieves high efficiency. We outline applications of our results to outsourced two-party protocols.

We present a new approach to construct several leakage-resilient cryptographic primitives, including leakage-resilient public-key encryption (PKE) schemes, authenticated key exchange (AKE) protocols and low-latency key exchange (LLKE) protocols. To this end, we introduce a new primitive called leakage-resilient non-interactive key exchange (LR-NIKE) protocol. We introduce an appropriate security model for LR-NIKE protocols in the bounded memory leakage (BML) settings. We then show a secure construction of the LR-NIKE protocol in the BML setting that achieves an optimal leakage rate, i.e., 1 – o (1). Our construction of LR-NIKE requires a minimal use of a leak-free hardware component. We argue that the use of such a leak-free hardware component seems to be unavoidable in any construction of an LR-NIKE protocol, even in the BML setting. Finally, we show how to construct the aforementioned leakage-resilient primitives from such an LR-NIKE protocol as summarized below. All these primitives also achieve the same (optimal) leakage rate as the underlying LR-NIKE protocol. We show how to construct a leakage-resilient (LR) IND-CCA-2-secure PKE scheme in the BML model generically from a bounded LR-NIKE (BLR-NIKE) protocol. Our construction of LR-IND-CCA-2 secure PKE differs significantly from the state-of-the-art constructions of these primitives, which mainly use hash proof techniques to achieve leakage resilience. Moreover, our transformation preserves the leakage-rate of the underlying BLR-NIKE protocol. We introduce a new leakage model for AKE protocols, in the BML setting, and present a leakage-resilient AKE protocol construction from the LR-NIKE protocol. We introduce the first-ever leakage model for LLKE protocols in the BML setting and the first construction of such a leakage-resilient LLKE from the LR-NIKE protocol.