International Association
for Cryptologic Research

The Cheon-Kim-Kim-Song (CKKS) fully homomorphic encryption scheme is designed to efficiently perform computations on real numbers in an encrypted state. Recently, Drucker et al [J. Cryptol.] proposed an efficient strategy to use CKKS in a black-box manner to perform computations on binary data. In this work, we introduce several CKKS bootstrapping algorithms designed specifically for ciphertexts encoding binary data. Crucially, the new CKKS bootstrapping algorithms enable to bootstrap ciphertexts containing the binary data in the most significant bits. First, this allows to decrease the moduli used in bootstrapping, saving a larger share of the modulus budget for non-bootstrapping operations. In particular, we obtain full-slot bootstrapping in ring degree 2^14 for the first time. Second, the ciphertext format is compatible with the one used in the DM/CGGI fully homomorphic encryption schemes. Interestingly, we may combine our CKKS bootstrapping algorithms for bits with the fast ring packing technique from Bae et al [CRYPTO'23]. This leads to a new bootstrapping algorithm for DM/CGGI that outperforms the state-of-the-art approaches when the number of bootstraps to be performed simultaneously is in the low hundreds.

Homomorphically multiplying a plaintext matrix with a ciphertext matrix (PC-MM) is a central task for the private evaluation of transformers, commonly used for large language models. We provide several RLWE-based algorithms for PC-MM that consist of multiplications of plaintext matrices (PC-MM) and comparatively cheap pre-processing and post-processing steps: for small and large dimensions compared to the RLWE ring degree, and with and without precomputation. For the algorithms with precomputation, we show how to perform a \pcmm with a single floating-point PC-MM of the same dimensions. This is particularly meaningful for practical purposes as a floating-point PC-MM can be implemented using high-performance BLAS libraries. The algorithms rely on the multi-secret variant of RLWE, which allows to represent multiple ciphertexts more compactly. We give algorithms to convert from usual shared-secret RLWE ciphertexts to multi-secret ciphertexts and back. Further, we show that this format is compatible with homomorphic addition, plaintext-ciphertext multiplication, and key-switching. This in turn allows us to accelerate the slots-to-coeffs and coeffs-to-slots steps of CKKS bootstrapping when several ciphertexts are bootstrapped at once. Combining batch-bootstrapping with efficient PC-MM results in MaMBo (Matrix Multiplication Bootstrapping), a bootstrapping algorithm that can perform a PC-MM for a limited overhead.

We present HAETAE (Hyperball bimodAl modulE rejecTion signAture schemE), a new lattice-based signature scheme. Like the NIST-selected Dilithium signature scheme, HAETAE is based on the Fiat-Shamir with Aborts paradigm, but our design choices target an improved complexity/compactness compromise that is highly relevant for many space-limited application scenarios. We primarily focus on reducing signature and verification key sizes so that signatures fit into one TCP or UDP datagram while preserving a high level of security against a variety of attacks. As a result, our scheme has signature and verification key sizes up to 39% and 25% smaller, respectively, compared than Dilithium. We provide a portable, constanttime reference implementation together with an optimized implementation using AVX2 instructions and an implementation with reduced stack size for the Cortex-M4. Moreover, we describe how to efficiently protect HAETAE against implementation attacks such as side-channel analysis, making it an attractive candidate for use in IoT and other embedded systems.

The native plaintexts of the Cheon-Kim-Kim-Song (CKKS) fully homomorphic encryption scheme are vectors of approximations to complex numbers. Drucker \emph{et al} [J. Cryptol.'24] have showed how to use CKKS to efficiently perform computations on bits and small bit-length integers, by relying on their canonical embeddings into the complex plane. For small bit-length integers, Chung \emph{et al} [IACR eprint'24] recently suggested to rather rely on an embedding into complex roots of unity, to gain numerical stability and efficiency. Both works use CKKS in a black-box manner. Inspired by the design by Bae \emph{et al} [Eurocrypt'24] of a dedicated bootstrapping algorithm for ciphertexts encoding bits, we propose a CKKS bootstrapping algorithm, $\style{SI\mbox{-}BTS}$ (small-integer bootstrapping), for ciphertexts encoding small bit-length integers. For this purpose, we build upon the DM/CGGI-to-CKKS conversion algorithm from Boura \emph{et al} [J.~Math. Cryptol.'20], to bootstrap canonically embedded integers to integers embedded as roots of unity. $\style{SI\mbox{-}BTS}$ allows functional bootstrapping: it can evaluate an arbitrary function of its input while bootstrapping. It may also be used to batch-(functional-)bootstrap multiple DM/CGGI ciphertexts. For example, its amortized cost for evaluating an 8-bit look-up table on~$2^{12}$ DM/CGGI ciphertexts is~3.75ms (single-thread CPU, 128-bit security). We adapt $\style{SI\mbox{-}BTS}$ to simultaneously bootstrap multiple CKKS ciphertexts for bits. The resulting $\style{BB\mbox{-}BTS}$ algorithm (batch-bits bootstrapping) allows to decrease the amortized cost of a binary gate evaluation. Compared to Bae \emph{et al}, it gives a 2.4x speed-up.

We study constructions of threshold fully homomorphic encryption with small partial decryption shares. In this context, we discuss in details the technicalities for achieving full-fledged threshold FHE, and bring light to limitations regarding prior works, inclucing an attack against the recent construction from Boudgoust and Scholl [ASIACRYPT 2023]. In light of our observations, we generalize the definition of threshold fully homomorphic encryption by adding an algorithm which allows to sanitize evaluated ciphertexts before they are decrypted by parties. In this setting, we are able to propose a construction which offers small partial decryption shares and avoids exponential noise flooding during partial decryption. In addition, we also propose an alternative protocol based on circuit-private (non-threshold) FHE and threshold public-key encryption for private delegation of computation on joint data, but requires an additional round of communication compared to our threshold FHE construction.

Abstract. We describe an adaptation of Schnorr’s signature to the lattice setting, which relies on Gaussian convolution rather than flooding or rejection sampling as previous approaches. It does not involve any abort, can be proved secure in the ROM and QROM using existing analyses of the Fiat-Shamir transfom, and enjoys smaller signature sizes (both asymptotically and for concrete security levels).

Lyubashevky’s signatures are based on the Fiat-Shamir with Aborts paradigm. It transforms an interactive identification protocol that has a non-negligible probability of aborting into a signature by repeating executions until a loop iteration does not trigger an abort. Interaction is removed by replacing the challenge of the verifier by the evaluation of a hash function, modeled as a random oracle in the analysis. The access to the random oracle is classical (ROM), resp. quantum (QROM), if one is interested in security against classical, resp. quantum, adversaries. Most analyses in the literature consider a setting with a bounded number of aborts (i.e., signing fails if no signature is output within a prescribed number of loop iterations), while practical instantiations (e.g., Dilithium) run until a signature is output (i.e., loop iterations are unbounded). In this work, we emphasize that combining random oracles with loop iterations induces numerous technicalities for analyzing correctness, runtime, and security of the resulting schemes, both in the bounded and unbounded case. As a first contribution, we put light on errors in all existing analyses. We then provide two detailed analyses in the QROM for the bounded case, adapted from Kiltz et al [EUROCRYPT’18] and Grilo et al [ASIACRYPT’21]. In the process, we prove the underlying Σ-protocol to achieve a stronger zero-knowledge property than usually considered for Σ-protocols with aborts, which enables a corrected analysis. A further contribution is a detailed analysis in the case of unbounded aborts, the latter inducing several additional subtleties.

Most of the current fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) schemes are based on either the learning-with-errors (LWE) problem or on its ring variant (RLWE) for storing plaintexts. During the homomorphic computation of FHE schemes, RLWE formats provide high throughput when considering several messages, and LWE formats provide a low latency when there are only a few messages. Efficient conversion can bridge the advantages of each format. However, converting LWE formats into RLWE format, which is called \textit{ring packing}, has been a challenging problem. We propose an efficient solution for ring packing for FHE. The main improvement of this work is twofold. First, we accelerate the existing ring packing methods by using bootstrapping and ring switching techniques, achieving practical runtimes. Second, we propose a new method for efficient ring packing, \textsc{HERMES}, by using ciphertexts in Module-LWE (MLWE) formats, to also reduce the memory. To this end, we generalize the tools of LWE and RLWE formats for MLWE formats. On a single-thread implementation, \textsc{HERMES} consumes $10.2$s for the ring packing of $2^{15}$ LWE-format ciphertexts into an RLWE-format ciphertext. This gives $41$x higher throughput compared to the state-of-the-art ring packing for FHE, \textsc{PEGASUS} [S\&P'21], which takes $51.7$s for packing $2^{12}$ LWE ciphertexts with similar homomorphic capacity. We also illustrate the efficiency of \textsc{HERMES} by using it for transciphering from LWE symmetric encryption to CKKS fully homomorphic encryption, significantly outperforming the recent proposals \textsc{HERA} [Asiacrypt'21] and \textsc{Rubato} [Eurocrypt'22].

The presumed hardness of the Shortest Vector Problem for ideal lattices (Ideal-SVP) has been a fruitful assumption to understand other assumptions on algebraic lattices and as a security foundation of cryptosystems. Gentry [CRYPTO’10] proved that Ideal-SVP enjoys a worst-case to average-case reduction, where the average-case distribution is the uniform distribution over the set of inverses of prime ideals of small algebraic norm (below d^O(d) for cyclotomic fields, where d refers to the field degree). De Boer et al. [CRYPTO’20] btained another random self-reducibility result for an average-case distribution involving integral ideals of norm 2^O(d^2). In this work, we show that Ideal-SVP for the uniform distribution over inverses of small-norm prime ideals reduces to Ideal-SVP for the uniform distribution over small-norm prime ideals. Combined with Gentry’s reduction, this leads to a worst-case to average-case reduction for the uniform distribution over the set of small-norm prime ideals. Using the reduction from Pellet-Mary and Stehlé [ASIACRYPT’21], this notably leads to the first distribution over NTRU instances with a polynomial modulus whose hardness is supported by a worst-case lattice problem.

Updatable public key encryption has recently been introduced as a solution to achieve forward-security in the context of secure group messaging without hurting efficiency, but so far, no efficient lattice-based instantiation of this primitive is known. In this work, we construct the first LWE-based UPKE scheme with polynomial modulus-to-noise rate, which is CPA-secure in the standard model. At the core of our security analysis is a generalized reduction from the standard LWE problem to (a stronger version of) the Extended LWE problem. We further extend our construction to achieve stronger security notions by proposing two generic transforms. Our first transform allows to obtain CCA security in the random oracle model and adapts the Fujisaki-Okamoto transform to the UPKE setting. Our second transform allows to achieve security against malicious updates by adding a NIZK argument in the update mechanism. In the process, we also introduce the notion of Updatable Key Encapsulation Mechanism (UKEM), as the updatable variant of KEMs. Overall, we obtain a CCA-secure UKEM in the random oracle model whose ciphertext sizes are of the same order of magnitude as that of CRYSTALS-Kyber.

The NTRU problem can be viewed as an instance of finding a short non-zero vector in a lattice, under the promise that it contains an exceptionally short vector. Further, the lattice under scope has the structure of a rank-2 module over the ring of integers of a number field. Let us refer to this problem as the module unique Shortest Vector Problem,or mod-uSVP for short. We exhibit two reductions that together provide evidence the NTRU problem is not just a particular case of mod-uSVP, but representative of it from a computational perspective. First, we reduce worst-case mod-uSVP to worst-case NTRU. For this, we rely on an oracle for id-SVP, the problem of finding short non-zero vectors in ideal lattices. Using the worst-case id-SVP to worst-case NTRU reduction from Pellet-Mary and Stehlé [ASIACRYPT'21],this shows that worst-case NTRU is equivalent to worst-case mod-uSVP. Second, we give a random self-reduction for mod-uSVP. We put forward a distribution D over mod-uSVP instances such that solving mod-uSVP with a non-negligible probability for samples from D allows to solve mod-uSVP in the worst-case. With the first result, this gives a reduction from worst-case mod-uSVP to an average-case version of NTRU where the NTRU instance distribution is inherited from D. This worst-case to average-case reduction requires an oracle for id-SVP.

Lyubashevsky’s signatures are based on the Fiat-Shamir with aborts paradigm, whose central ingredient is the use of rejection sampling to transform secret-dependent signature samples into samples from (or close to) a secret-independent target distribution. Several choices for the underlying distributions and for the rejection sampling strategy can be considered. In this work, we study Lyubashevsky’s signatures through the lens of rejection sampling, and aim to minimize signature size given signing runtime requirements. Several of our results concern rejection sampling itself and could have other applications. We prove lower bounds for compactness of signatures given signing run- time requirements, and for expected runtime of perfect rejection sampling strategies. We also propose a Rényi-divergence-based analysis of Lyuba- shevsky’s signatures which allows for larger deviations from the target distribution, and show hyperball uniforms to be a good choice of distri- butions: they asymptotically reach our compactness lower bounds and offer interesting features for practical deployment. Finally, we propose a different rejection sampling strategy which circumvents the expected runtime lower bound and provides a worst-case runtime guarantee.

The 25 year-old NTRU problem is an important computational assumption in public-key cryptography. However, from a reduction perspective, its relative hardness compared to other problems on Euclidean lattices is not well-understood. Its decision version reduces to the search Ring-LWE problem, but this only provides a hardness upper bound. We provide two answers to the long-standing open problem of providing reduction-based evidence of the hardness of the NTRU problem. First, we reduce the worst-case approximate Shortest Vector Problem over ideal lattices to an average-case search variant of the NTRU problem. Second, we reduce another average-case search variant of the NTRU problem to the decision NTRU problem.

Several recent proposals of efficient public-key encryption are based on variants of the polynomial learning with errors problem (\textsf{PLWE}$^f$) in which the underlying \emph{polynomial} ring $\mZ_q[x]/f$ is replaced with the (related) modular \emph{integer} ring $\mZ_{f(q)}$; the corresponding problem is known as \emph{Integer Polynomial Learning with Errors} (\textsf{I-PLWE}$^f$). Cryptosystems based on \textsf{I-PLWE}$^f$ and its variants can exploit optimised big-integer arithmetic to achieve good practical performance, as exhibited by the \textsf{ThreeBears} cryptosystem. Unfortunately, the average-case hardness of \textsf{I-PLWE}$^f$ and its relation to more established lattice problems have to date remained unclear. We describe the first polynomial-time average-case reductions for the search variant of \textsf{I-PLWE}$^f$, proving its computational equivalence with the search variant of its counterpart problem \textsf{PLWE}$^f$. Our reductions apply to a large class of defining polynomials~$f$. To obtain our results, we employ a careful adaptation of R\'{e}nyi divergence analysis techniques to bound the impact of the integer ring arithmetic carries on the error distributions. As an application, we present a deterministic public-key cryptosystem over integer rings. Our cryptosystem, which resembles \textsf{ThreeBears}, enjoys one-way (OW-CPA) security provably based on the search variant of~\textsf{I-PLWE}$^f$.

In distributed pseudorandom functions (DPRFs), a PRF secret key SK is secret shared among N servers so that each server can locally compute a partial evaluation of the PRF on some input X . A combiner that collects t partial evaluations can then reconstruct the evaluation F ( SK ,  X ) of the PRF under the initial secret key. So far, all non-interactive constructions in the standard model are based on lattice assumptions. One caveat is that they are only known to be secure in the static corruption setting, where the adversary chooses the servers to corrupt at the very beginning of the game, before any evaluation query. In this work, we construct the first fully non-interactive adaptively secure DPRF in the standard model. Our construction is proved secure under the $$\textsf {LWE}$$ LWE assumption against adversaries that may adaptively decide which servers they want to corrupt. We also extend our construction in order to achieve robustness against malicious adversaries.

We introduce a new technique called `Measure-Rewind-Measure' (MRM) to achieve tighter security proofs in the quantum random oracle model (QROM). We first apply our MRM technique to derive a new security proof for a variant of the `double-sided' quantum One-Way to Hiding Lemma (O2H) of Bindel et al. [TCC 2019] which, for the first time, avoids the square-root advantage loss in the security proof. In particular, it bypasses a previous `impossibility result' of Jiang, Zhang and Ma [IACR eprint 2019]. We then apply our new O2H Lemma to give a new tighter security proof for the Fujisaki-Okamoto transform for constructing a strong (INDCCA) Key Encapsulation Mechanism (KEM) from a weak (INDCPA) public-key encryption scheme satisfying a mild injectivity assumption.

We describe a digital signature scheme $$mathsf {MPSign}$$ , whose security relies on the conjectured hardness of the Polynomial Learning With Errors problem ( $$mathsf {PLWE}$$ ) for at least one defining polynomial within an exponential-size family (as a function of the security parameter). The proposed signature scheme follows the Fiat-Shamir framework and can be viewed as the Learning With Errors counterpart of the signature scheme described by Lyubashevsky at Asiacrypt 2016, whose security relies on the conjectured hardness of the Polynomial Short Integer Solution ( $$mathsf {PSIS}$$ ) problem for at least one defining polynomial within an exponential-size family. As opposed to the latter, $$mathsf {MPSign}$$ enjoys a security proof from $$mathsf {PLWE}$$ that is tight in the quantum-access random oracle model. The main ingredient is a reduction from $$mathsf {PLWE}$$ for an arbitrary defining polynomial among exponentially many, to a variant of the Middle-Product Learning with Errors problem ( $$mathsf {MPLWE}$$ ) that allows for secrets that are small compared to the working modulus. We present concrete parameters for $$mathsf {MPSign}$$ using such small secrets, and show that they lead to significant savings in signature length over Lyubashevsky’s Asiacrypt 2016 scheme (which uses larger secrets) at typical security levels. As an additional small contribution, and in contrast to $$mathsf {MPSign}$$ (or $$mathsf {MPLWE}$$ ), we present an efficient key-recovery attack against Lyubashevsky’s scheme (or the inhomogeneous $$mathsf {PSIS}$$ problem), when it is used with sufficiently small secrets, showing the necessity of a lower bound on secret size for the security of that scheme.

We give a lattice reduction algorithm that achieves root Hermite factor k^(1/(2k)) in time k^(k/8 + o(k)) and polynomial memory. This improves on the previously best known enumeration-based algorithms which achieve the same quality, but in time k^(k/(2e) + o(k)). A cost of k^(k/8 + o(k)) was previously mentioned as potentially achievable (Hanrot-Stehlé’10) or as a heuristic lower bound (Nguyen’10) for enumeration algorithms. We prove the complexity and quality of our algorithm under a heuristic assumption and provide empirical evidence from simulation and implementation experiments attesting to its performance for practical and cryptographic parameter sizes. Our work also suggests potential avenues for achieving costs below k^(k/8 + o(k)) for the same root Hermite factor, based on the geometry of SDBKZ-reduced bases.

We describe an algorithm to solve the approximate Shortest Vector Problem for lattices corresponding to ideals of the ring of integers of an arbitrary number field K. This algorithm has a pre-processing phase, whose run-time is exponential in  $$\log |\varDelta |$$ log|Δ| with  $$\varDelta $$ Δ the discriminant of K. Importantly, this pre-processing phase depends only on K. The pre-processing phase outputs an “advice”, whose bit-size is no more than the run-time of the query phase. Given this advice, the query phase of the algorithm takes as input any ideal I of the ring of integers, and outputs an element of I which is at most $$\exp (\widetilde{O}((\log |\varDelta |)^{\alpha +1}/n))$$ exp(O~((log|Δ|)α+1/n)) times longer than a shortest non-zero element of I (with respect to the Euclidean norm of its canonical embedding). This query phase runs in time and space $$\exp (\widetilde{O}( (\log |\varDelta |)^{\max (2/3, 1-2\alpha )}))$$ exp(O~((log|Δ|)max(2/3,1-2α))) in the classical setting, and $$\exp (\widetilde{O}((\log |\varDelta |)^{1-2\alpha }))$$ exp(O~((log|Δ|)1-2α)) in the quantum setting. The parameter $$\alpha $$ α can be chosen arbitrarily in [0, 1 / 2]. Both correctness and cost analyses rely on heuristic assumptions, whose validity is consistent with experiments.The algorithm builds upon the algorithms from Cramer et al. [EUROCRYPT 2016] and Cramer et al. [EUROCRYPT 2017]. It relies on the framework from Buchmann [Séminaire de théorie des nombres 1990], which allows to merge them and to extend their applicability from prime-power cyclotomic fields to all number fields. The cost improvements are obtained by allowing precomputations that depend on the field only.

In this paper, we describe a polynomial time cryptanalysis of the (approximate) multilinear map proposed by Coron, Lepoint, and Tibouchi in Crypto13 (CLT13). This scheme includes a zero-testing functionality that determines whether the message of a given encoding is zero or not. This functionality is useful for designing several of its applications, but it leaks unexpected values, such as linear combinations of the secret elements. By collecting the outputs of the zero-testing algorithm, we construct a matrix containing the hidden information as eigenvalues, and then recover all the secret elements of the CLT13 scheme via diagonalization of the matrix. In addition, we provide polynomial time algorithms to directly break the security assumptions of many applications based on the CLT13 scheme. These algorithms include solving subgroup membership, decision linear, and graded external Diffie–Hellman problems. These algorithms mainly rely on the computation of the determinants of the matrices and their greatest common divisor, instead of performing their diagonalization.

The LLL algorithm takes as input a basis of a Euclidean lattice, and, within a polynomial number of operations, it outputs another basis of the same lattice but consisting of rather short vectors. We provide a generalization to R-modules contained in  $$K^n$$ for arbitrary number fields K and dimension n, with R denoting the ring of integers of K. Concretely, we introduce an algorithm that efficiently finds short vectors in rank-n modules when given access to an oracle that finds short vectors in rank-2 modules, and an algorithm that efficiently finds short vectors in rank-2 modules given access to a Closest Vector Problem oracle for a lattice that depends only on K. The second algorithm relies on quantum computations and its analysis is heuristic.

The hardness of the learning with errors (LWE) problem is one of the most fruitful resources of modern cryptography. In particular, it is one of the most prominent candidates for secure post-quantum cryptography. Understanding its quantum complexity is therefore an important goal.We show that under quantum polynomial time reductions, LWE is equivalent to a relaxed version of the dihedral coset problem (DCP), which we call extrapolated DCP (eDCP). The extent of extrapolation varies with the LWE noise rate. By considering different extents of extrapolation, our result generalizes Regev’s famous proof that if DCP is in BQP (quantum poly-time) then so is LWE (FOCS 02). We also discuss a connection between eDCP and Childs and Van Dam’s algorithm for generalized hidden shift problems (SODA 07).Our result implies that a BQP solution for LWE might not require the full power of solving DCP, but rather only a solution for its relaxed version, eDCP, which could be easier.

In this paper, we present the lattice-based signature scheme Dilithium, which is a component of the CRYSTALS (Cryptographic Suite for Algebraic Lattices) suite that was submitted to NIST’s call for post-quantum cryptographic standards. The design of the scheme avoids all uses of discrete Gaussian sampling and is easily implementable in constant-time. For the same security levels, our scheme has a public key that is 2.5X smaller than the previously most efficient lattice-based schemes that did not use Gaussians, while having essentially the same signature size. In addition to the new design, we significantly improve the running time of the main component of many lattice-based constructions – the number theoretic transform. Our AVX2-based implementation results in a speed-up of roughly a factor of 2 over the previously best algorithms that appear in the literature. The techniques for obtaining this speed-up also have applications to other lattice-based schemes.

In distributed pseudorandom functions (DPRFs), a PRF secret key SK is secret shared among N servers so that each server can locally compute a partial evaluation of the PRF on some input X. A combiner that collects t partial evaluations can then reconstruct the evaluation F(SK, X) of the PRF under the initial secret key. So far, all non-interactive constructions in the standard model are based on lattice assumptions. One caveat is that they are only known to be secure in the static corruption setting, where the adversary chooses the servers to corrupt at the very beginning of the game, before any evaluation query. In this work, we construct the first fully non-interactive adaptively secure DPRF in the standard model. Our construction is proved secure under the $$\mathsf {LWE}$$ assumption against adversaries that may adaptively decide which servers they want to corrupt. We also extend our construction in order to achieve robustness against malicious adversaries.

The Blockwise-Korkine-Zolotarev (BKZ) lattice reduction algorithm is central in cryptanalysis, in particular for lattice-based cryptography. A precise understanding of its practical behavior in terms of run-time and output quality is necessary for parameter selection in cryptographic design. As the provable worst-case bounds poorly reflect the practical behavior, cryptanalysts rely instead on the heuristic BKZ simulator of Chen and Nguyen (Asiacrypt’11). It fits better with practical experiments, but not entirely. In particular, it over-estimates the norm of the first few vectors in the output basis. Put differently, BKZ performs better than its Chen–Nguyen simulation.In this work, we first report experiments providing more insight on this shorter-than-expected phenomenon. We then propose a refined BKZ simulator by taking the distribution of short vectors in random lattices into consideration. We report experiments suggesting that this refined simulator more accurately predicts the concrete behavior of BKZ. Furthermore, we design a new BKZ variant that exploits the shorter-than-expected phenomenon. For the same cost assigned to the underlying SVP-solver, the new BKZ variant produces bases of better quality. We further illustrate its potential impact by testing it on the SVP-120 instance of the Darmstadt lattice challenge.