International Association
for Cryptologic Research

To date, the strongest notions of security achievable for two-round publicly-verifiable cryptographic proofs for NP are witness indistinguishability (Dwork-Naor 2000, Groth-Ostrovsky-Sahai 2006), witness hiding (Bitansky-Khurana-Paneth 2019, Kuykendall-Zhandry 2020), and super-polynomial simulation (Pass 2003, Khurana-Sahai 2017). On the other hand, zero-knowledge and even weak zero-knowledge (Dwork-Naor-Reingold-Stockmeyer 1999) are impossible in the two-round publicly-verifiable setting (Goldreich-Oren 1994). This leaves an enormous gap in our theoretical understanding of known achievable security and the impossibility results for two-round publicly-verifiable cryptographic proofs for NP. Towards filling this gap, we propose a new and natural notion of security, called witness semantic security, that captures the natural and strong notion that an adversary should not be able to learn any partial information about the prover's witness beyond what it could learn given only the statement x. Not only does our notion of witness semantic security subsume both witness indistinguishability and witness hiding, but it also has an easily appreciable interpretation. Moreover, we show that assuming the subexponential hardness of LWE, there exists a two-round public-coin publicly-verifiable witness semantic secure argument. To our knowledge, this is the strongest form of security known for this setting. As a key application of our work, we show that non-interactive zero-knowledge (NIZK) arguments in the common reference string (CRS) model can additionally maintain witness semantic security even when the CRS is maliciously generated. Our work gives the first construction from (subexponential) standard assumptions that achieves a notion stronger than witness-indistinguishability against a malicious CRS authority. In order to achieve our results, we give the first construction of a ZAP from subexponential LWE that is adaptively sound. Additionally, we propose a notion of simulation using non-uniform advice about a malicious CRS, which we also believe will be of independent interest.

We give the first construction of a (fully) black-box round- optimal secure multiparty computation protocol in the plain model. Our protocol makes black-box use of a sub-exponentially secure two-message statistical sender private oblivious transfer (SSP-OT), which in turn can be based on (sub-exponential variants of) most of the standard cryptographic assumptions known to imply public-key cryptography

In this work, we present the first construction of a fully non-interactive publicly-verifiable delegation scheme for committed programs. More specifically, we consider a setting where Alice is a trusted author who delegates to an untrusted worker the task of hosting a program $P$, represented as a Boolean circuit. Alice also commits to a succinct value based on $P$. Any arbitrary user/verifier without knowledge of $P$ should be convinced that they are receiving from the worker an actual computation of Alice's program on a given input $x$. Before our work, the only object known to imply this challenging form of delegation was a SNARG/SNARK for $\mathcal{NP}$. This is because from the point of view of the user/verifier, the program $P$ is an unknown witness to the computation. However, constructing a SNARG for $\mathcal{NP}$ from standard assumptions remains a major open problem. In our work, we show how to achieve delegation in this challenging context assuming only the hardness of the Learning With Errors (LWE) assumption, bypassing the apparent need for a SNARG for $\mathcal{NP}$.

We revisit the problem of {\em reusable} non-interactive secure computation (NISC). A standard NISC protocol for a sender-receiver functionality $f$ enables the receiver to encrypt its input $x$ such that any sender, on input $y$, can send back a message revealing only $f(x,y)$. Security should hold even when either party can be malicious. A {\em reusable} NISC protocol has the additional feature that the receiver's message can be safely reused for computing multiple outputs $f(x,y_i)$. Here security should hold even when a malicious sender can learn partial information about the honest receiver's outputs in each session. We present the first reusable NISC protocol for general functions $f$ that only makes a {\em black-box} use of any two-message oblivious transfer protocol, along with a random oracle. All previous reusable NISC protocols either made a non-black-box use of cryptographic primitives (Cachin et al., ICALP 2002) or alternatively required a stronger arithmetic variant of oblivious transfer and were restricted to $f$ in $\mathsf{NC}^1$ or similar classes (Chase et al., Crypto 2019). Our result is obtained via a general compiler from standard NISC to reusable NISC that makes use of special type of honest-majority protocols for secure multiparty computation. Finally, we extend the above main result to reusable {\em two-sided} NISC, in which two parties can encrypt their inputs in the first round and then reveal different functions of their inputs in multiple sessions. This extension either requires an additional (black-box) use of additively homomorphic commitment or alternatively requires the parties to maintain a state between sessions.

Indistinguishability Obfuscation (iO) is a highly versatile primitive implying a myriad advanced cryptographic applications. Up until recently, the state of feasibility of iO was unclear, which changed with works (Jain-Lin-Sahai STOC 2021, Jain-Lin-Sahai Eurocrypt 2022) showing that iO can be finally based upon well-studied hardness assumptions. Unfortunately, one of these assumptions is broken in quantum polynomial time. Luckily, the line work of Brakerski et al. Eurocrypt 2020, Gay-Pass STOC 2021, Wichs-Wee Eurocrypt 2021, Brakerski et al. ePrint 2021, Devadas et al. TCC 2021 simultaneously created new pathways to construct iO with plausible post-quantum security from new assumptions, namely a new form of circular security of LWE in the presence of leakages. At the same time, effective cryptanalysis of this line of work has also begun to emerge (Hopkins et al. Crypto 2021). It is important to identify the simplest possible conjectures that yield post-quantum iO and can be understood through known cryptanalytic tools. In that spirit, and in light of the cryptanalysis of Hopkins et al., recently Devadas et al. gave an elegant construction of iO from a fully-specified and simple-to-state assumption along with a thorough initial cryptanalysis. Our work gives a polynomial-time distinguisher on their "final assumption" for their scheme. Our algorithm is extremely simple to describe: Solve a carefully designed linear system arising out of the assumption. The argument of correctness of our algorithm, however, is nontrivial. We also analyze the "T-sum" version of the same assumption described by Devadas et. al. and under a reasonable conjecture rule out the assumption for any value of T that implies iO.

We initiate the study of streaming functional encryption (sFE) which is designed for scenarios in which data arrives in a streaming manner and is computed on in an iterative manner as the stream arrives. Unlike in a standard functional encryption (FE) scheme, in an sFE scheme, we (1) do not require the entire data set to be known at encryption time and (2) allow for partial decryption given only a prefix of the input. More specifically, in an sFE scheme, we can sequentially encrypt each data point x_i in a stream of data x = x_1 . . . x_n as it arrives, without needing to wait for all n values. We can then generate function keys for streaming functions which are stateful functions that take as input a message x_i and a state st_i and output a value y_i and the next state st_{i+1}. For any k ≤ n, a user with a function key for a streaming function f can learn the first k output values y_1 . . . y_k where (y_i, st_{i+1}) = f (x_i, st_i) and st_1 = ⊥ given only ciphertexts for the first k elements x_1 . . . x_k. In this work, we introduce the notion of sFE and show how to construct it from FE. In particular, we show how to achieve a secure sFE scheme for P/Poly from a compact, secure FE scheme for P/Poly, where our security notion for sFE is similar to standard FE security except that we require all function queries to be made before the challenge ciphertext query. Furthermore, by combining our result with the FE construction of Jain, Lin, and Sahai (STOC, 2022), we show how to achieve a secure sFE scheme for P/Poly from the polynomial hardness of well-studied assumptions.

A wiretap coding scheme for a pair of noisy channels $(\chB,\chE)$ enables Alice to reliably communicate a message to Bob by sending its encoding over $\chB$, while hiding the message from an adversary Eve who obtains the same encoding over $\chE$. A necessary condition for the feasibility of writeup coding is that $\chB$ is not a {\em degradation} of $\chE$, namely Eve cannot simulate Bob’s view. While insufficient in the information-theoretic setting, a recent work of Ishai, Korb, Lou, and Sahai (Crypto 2022) showed that the non-degradation condition {\em is} sufficient in the computational setting, assuming idealized flavors of obfuscation. The question of basing a similar feasibility result on standard cryptographic assumptions was left open, even in simple special cases. In this work, we settle the question for all discrete memoryless channels where the (common) input alphabet of $\chB$ and $\chE$ is {\em binary}, and with arbitrary finite output alphabet, under the standard assumptions that indistinguishability obfuscation and injective PRGs exist. In particular, this establishes the feasibility of computational wiretap coding when $\chB$ is a binary symmetric channel with crossover probability $p$ and $\chE$ is a binary erasure channel with erasure probability $e$, where $e>2p$. On the information-theoretic side, our result builds on a new polytope characterization of channel degradation for pairs of binary-input channels, which may be of independent interest.

Secure computation is a cornerstone of modern cryptography and a rich body of research is devoted to understanding its round complexity. In this work, we consider two-party computation (2PC) protocols (where both parties receive output) that remain secure in the realistic setting where many instances of the protocol are executed in parallel (concurrent security). We obtain a two-round concurrent-secure 2PC protocol based on a single, standard, post-quantum assumption: The subexponential hardness of the learning-with-errors (LWE) problem. Our protocol is in the plain model, i.e., it has no trusted setup, and it is secure in the super-polynomial simulation framework of Pass (EUROCRYPT 2003). Since two rounds are minimal for (concurrent) 2PC, this work resolves the round complexity of concurrent 2PC from standard assumptions. As immediate applications, our work establishes feasibility results for interesting cryptographic primitives such as the first two-round password authentication key exchange (PAKE) protocol in the plain model and the first two-round concurrent secure computation protocol for quantum circuits (2PQC).

A wiretap coding scheme (Wyner in Bell Syst Tech J 54(8):1355–1387, 1975) enables Alice to reliably communicate a message m to an honest Bob by sending an encoding c over a noisy channel $$\textsf{ChB}$$ ChB , while at the same time hiding m from Eve who receives c over another noisy channel $$\textsf{ChE}$$ ChE . Wiretap coding is clearly impossible when $$\textsf{ChB}$$ ChB is a degraded version of $$\textsf{ChE}$$ ChE , in the sense that the output of $$\textsf{ChB}$$ ChB can be simulated using only the output of $$\textsf{ChE}$$ ChE . A classic work of Csiszár and Korner (IEEE Trans Inf Theory 24(3):339–348, 1978) shows that the converse does not hold. This follows from their full characterization of the channel pairs $$(\textsf{ChB},\textsf{ChE})$$ ( ChB , ChE ) that enable information-theoretic wiretap coding. In this work, we show that in fact the converse does hold when considering computational security ; that is, wiretap coding against a computationally bounded Eve is possible if and only if $$\textsf{ChB}$$ ChB is not a degraded version of $$\textsf{ChE}$$ ChE . Our construction assumes the existence of virtual black-box obfuscation of specific classes of “evasive” functions that generalize fuzzy point functions and can be heuristically instantiated using indistinguishability obfuscation. Finally, our solution has the appealing feature of being universal in the sense that Alice’s algorithm depends only on $$\textsf{ChB}$$ ChB and not on $$\textsf{ChE}$$ ChE .

We give black-box, round-optimal protocol compilers from semi-honest security to malicious security in the Random Oracle Model (ROM) and in the 1-out-2 OT correlations model. We use our compilers to obtain the following results: \begin{itemize} \item A two-round, two-party protocol secure against malicious adversaries in the random oracle model making black-box use of a two-round semi-honest secure protocol. Prior to our work, such a result was not known even considering special functionalities such as a two-round oblivious transfer. This result also implies the first constructions of two-round malicious (batch) OT/OLE in the random oracle model based on the black-box use of two-round semi-honest (batch) OT/OLE. \item A three-round multiparty secure computation protocol in the random oracle model secure against malicious adversaries that is based on the black-box use of two-round semi-honest OT. This protocol matches a known round complexity lower bound due to Applebaum et al. (ITCS'20) and is based on a minimal cryptographic hardness assumption. \item A two-round, multiparty secure computation protocol in the $1$-out-of-$2$ OT correlations model that is secure against malicious adversaries and makes black-box use of cryptography. This gives new round-optimal protocols for computing arithmetic branching programs that are statistically secure and makes black-box use of the underlying field. \end{itemize} As a contribution of independent interest, we provide a new variant of the IPS compiler (Ishai, Prabhakaran and Sahai, Crypto 2008) in the two-round setting, where we relax requirements on the IPS ``inner protocol'' by strengthening the ``outer protocol''.

In this work, we study what minimal sets of assumptions suffice for constructing indistinguishability obfuscation ($\iO$). We prove: {\bf Theorem}(Informal): {\em Assume sub-exponential security of the following assumptions: - the Learning Parity with Noise ($\mathsf{LPN}$) assumption over general prime fields $\mathbb{F}_p$ with polynomially many $\mathsf{LPN}$ samples and error rate $1/k^\delta$, where $k$ is the dimension of the $\mathsf{LPN}$ secret, and $\delta>0$ is any constant; - the existence of a Boolean Pseudo-Random Generator ($\mathsf{PRG}$) in $\mathsf{NC}^0$ with stretch $n^{1+\tau}$, where $n$ is the length of the $\mathsf{PRG}$ seed, and $\tau>0$ is any constant; - the Decision Linear ($\mathsf{DLIN}$) assumption on symmetric bilinear groups of prime order. Then, (subexponentially secure) indistinguishability obfuscation for all polynomial-size circuits exists. Further, assuming only polynomial security of the aforementioned assumptions, there exists collusion resistant public-key functional encryption for all polynomial-size circuits. This removes the reliance on the Learning With Errors (LWE) assumption from the recent work of [Jain, Lin, Sahai STOC'21]. As a consequence, we obtain the first fully homomorphic encryption scheme that does not rely on any lattice-based hardness assumption. Our techniques feature a new notion of randomized encoding called Preprocessing Randomized Encoding (PRE), that essentially can be computed in the exponent of pairing groups. When combined with other new techniques, PRE gives a much more streamlined construction of $\iO$ while still maintaining reliance only on well-studied assumptions.

A wiretap coding scheme (Wyner, Bell Syst.\ Tech.\ J.\ 1975) enables Alice to reliably communicate a message m to an honest Bob by sending an encoding c over a noisy channel ChB while at the same time hiding m from Eve who receives c over another noisy channel ChE. Wiretap coding is clearly impossible when ChB is a degraded version of ChE, in the sense that the output of ChB can be simulated using only the output of ChE. A classic work of Csiszár and Korner (IEEE Trans.\ Inf.\ Theory, 1978) shows that the converse does not hold. This follows from their full characterization of the channel pairs (ChB, ChE) that enable information-theoretic wiretap coding. In this work, we show that in fact the converse does hold when considering computational security; that is, wiretap coding against a computationally bounded Eve is possible if and only if ChB is not a degraded version of ChE. Our construction assumes the existence of virtual black-box (VBB) obfuscation of specific classes of ``evasive'' functions that generalize fuzzy point functions, and can be heuristically instantiated using indistinguishability obfuscation. Finally, our solution has the appealing feature of being universal in the sense that Alice's algorithm depends only on ChB and not on ChE.

We give round-optimal {\em black-box} constructions of two-party and multiparty protocols in the common random/reference string (CRS) model, with security against malicious adversaries, based on any two-round oblivious transfer (OT) protocol in the same model. Specifically, we obtain two types of results. \smallskip \begin{enumerate} \item {\bf Two-party protocol.} We give a (two-round) {\it two-sided NISC} protocol that makes black-box use of two-round (malicious-secure) OT in the CRS model. In contrast to the standard setting of non-interactive secure computation (NISC), two-sided NISC allows communication from both parties in each round and delivers the output to both parties at the end of the protocol. Prior black-box constructions of two-sided NISC relied on idealized setup assumptions such as OT correlations, or were proven secure in the random oracle model. \item {\bf Multiparty protocol.} We give a three-round secure multiparty computation protocol for an arbitrary number of parties making black-box use of a two-round OT in the CRS model. The round optimality of this construction follows from a black-box impossibility proof of Applebaum et al. (ITCS 2020). Prior constructions either required the use of random oracles, or were based on two-round malicious-secure OT protocols that satisfied additional security properties. \end{enumerate}

All existing works building non-interactive zero-knowledge (NIZK) arguments for NP from the Learning With Errors (LWE) assumption have studied instantiating the Fiat-Shamir paradigm on a parallel repetition of an underlying honest-verifier zero knowledge (HVZK) sigma protocol, via an appropriately built correlation-intractable (CI) hash function from LWE. This technique has inherent efficiency losses that arise from parallel repetition. In this work, we show how to make use of the more efficient ``MPC in the Head'' technique for building an underlying honest-verifier protocol upon which to apply the Fiat-Shamir paradigm. To make this possible, we provide a new and more efficient construction of CI hash functions from LWE, using efficient algorithms for polynomial reconstruction as the main technical tool. We stress that our work provides a new and more efficient ``base construction'' for building LWE-based NIZK arguments for NP. Our protocol can be the building block around which other efficiency-focused bootstrapping techniques can be applied, such as the bootstrapping technique of Gentry et al. (Journal of Cryptology 2015).

In this work, we study the question of what set of simple-to-state assumptions suffice for constructing functional encryption and indistinguishability obfuscation ($i\mathcal{O}$), supporting all functions describable by polynomial-size circuits. Our work improves over the state-of-the-art work of Jain, Lin, Matt, and Sahai (Eurocrypt 2019) in multiple dimensions. New Assumption: Previous to our work, all constructions of $i\mathcal{O}$ from simple assumptions required novel pseudorandomness generators involving LWE samples and constant-degree polynomials over the integers, evaluated on the error of the LWE samples. In contrast, Boolean pseudorandom generators (PRGs) computable by constant-degree polynomials have been extensively studied since the work of Goldreich (2000). We show how to replace the novel pseudorandom objects over the integers used in previous works, with appropriate Boolean pseudorandom generators with sufficient stretch, when combined with LWE with binary error over suitable parameters. Both binary error LWE and constant degree Goldreich PRGs have been a subject of extensive cryptanalysis since much before our work and thus we back the plausibility of our assumption with security against algorithms studied in context of cryptanalysis of these objects. New Techniques: we introduce a number of new techniques: - We show how to build partially-hiding public-key functional encryption, supporting degree-2 functions in the secret part of the message, and arithmetic $\mathsf{NC}^1$ functions over the public part of the message, assuming only standard assumptions over asymmetric pairing groups. - We construct single-ciphertext secret-key functional encryption for all circuits with {\em linear} key generation, assuming only the LWE assumption. Simplification: Unlike prior works, our new techniques furthermore let us construct public-key functional encryption for polynomial-sized circuits directly (without invoking any bootstrapping theorem, nor transformation from secret-key to public key FE), and based only on the polynomial hardness of underlying assumptions. The functional encryption scheme satisfies a strong notion of efficiency where the size of the ciphertext grows only sublinearly in the output size of the circuit and not its size. Finally, assuming that the underlying assumptions are subexponentially hard, we can bootstrap this construction to achieve $i\mathcal{O}$.

We consider the question of minimizing the round complexity of secure multiparty computation (MPC) protocols that make a black-box use of simple cryptographic primitives in the setting of security against any number of malicious parties. In the plain model, previous black-box protocols required a high constant number of rounds (>15). This is far from the known lower bound of 4 rounds for protocols with black-box simulators. When allowing a random oblivious transfer (OT) correlation setup, 2-round protocols making a black-box use of a pseudorandom generator were previously known. However, such protocols were obtained via a round-collapsing ``protocol garbling'' technique that has poor concrete efficiency and makes a non-black-box use of an underlying malicious-secure protocol. We improve this state of affairs by presenting the following types of black-box protocols. a. 4-round ``pairwise MPC'' in the plain model. This round-optimal protocol enables each ordered pair of parties to compute a function of both inputs whose output is delivered to the second party. The protocol makes black-box use of any public-key encryption (PKE) with pseudorandom public keys. As a special case, we get a black-box round-optimal realization of secure (copies of) OT between every ordered pair of parties. b. 2-round MPC from OT correlations. This round-optimal protocol makes a black-box use of any general 2-round MPC protocol satisfying an augmented notion of semi-honest security. In the two-party case, this yields new kinds of 2-round black-box protocols. c. 5-round MPC in the plain model. This protocol makes a black-box use of PKE with pseudorandom public keys, and 2-round oblivious transfer with ``semi-malicious'' security. A key technical tool for the first result is a novel combination of split-state non-malleable codes (Dziembowski, Pietrzak, and Wichs, JACM '18) with standalone secure {\em two-party} protocols. The second result is based on a new round-optimized variant of the ``IPS compiler'' (Ishai, Prabhakaran and Sahai, Crypto '08). The third result is obtained via a specialized combination of these two techniques.

Dwork and Naor (FOCS'00) first introduced and constructed two message public coin witness indistinguishable proofs (ZAPs) for NP based on trapdoor permutations. Since then, ZAPs have also been obtained based on the decisional linear assumption on bilinear maps, and indistinguishability obfuscation, and have proven extremely useful in the design of several cryptographic primitives. However, all known constructions of two-message public coin (or even publicly verifiable) proof systems only guarantee witness indistinguishability against computationally bounded verifiers. In this paper, we construct the first public coin two message witness indistinguishable (WI) arguments for NP with {\em statistical} privacy, assuming quasi-polynomial hardness of the learning with errors (LWE) assumption. We also show that the same protocol has a super-polynomial simulator (SPS), which yields the first public-coin SPS statistical zero knowledge argument. Prior to this, there were no known constructions of two-message publicly verifiable WI protocols under lattice assumptions, even satisfying the weaker notion of computational witness indistinguishability.

Functional encryption (FE) combiners allow one to combine many candidates for a functional encryption scheme, possibly based on different computational assumptions, into another functional encryption candidate with the guarantee that the resulting candidate is secure as long as at least one of the original candidates is secure. The fundamental question in this area is whether FE combiners exist. There have been a series of works Ananth et. al. (CRYPTO '16), Ananth-Jain-Sahai (EUROCRYPT '17), Ananth et. al (TCC '19) on constructing FE combiners from various assumptions. We give the first unconditional construction of combiners for functional encryption, resolving this question completely. Our construction immediately implies an unconditional universal functional encryption scheme, an FE scheme that is secure if such an FE scheme exists. Previously such results either relied on algebraic assumptions or required subexponential security assumptions.

Security amplification is a fundamental problem in cryptography. In this work, we study security amplification for functional encryption. We show two main results: - For any constant epsilon in (0,1), we can amplify an epsilon-secure FE scheme for P/poly which is secure against all polynomial sized adversaries to a fully secure FE scheme for P/poly, unconditionally. - For any constant epsilon in (0,1), we can amplify an epsilon-secure FE scheme for P/poly which is secure against subexponential sized adversaries to a subexponentially secure FE scheme for P/poly, unconditionally. Furthermore, both of our amplification results preserve compactness of the underlying FE scheme. Previously, amplification results for FE were only known assuming subexponentially secure LWE. Along the way, we introduce a new form of homomorphic secret sharing called set homomorphic secret sharing that may be of independent interest. Additionally, we introduce a new technique, which allows one to argue security amplification of nested primitives, and prove a general theorem that can be used to analyze the security amplification of parallel repetitions.

We initiate a study of \emph{pseudorandom encodings}: efficiently computable and decodable encoding functions that map messages from a given distribution to a random-looking distribution. For instance, every distribution that can be perfectly compressed admits such a pseudorandom encoding. Pseudorandom encodings are motivated by a variety of cryptographic applications, including password-authenticated key exchange, ``honey encryption'' and steganography. The main question we ask is whether \emph{every} efficiently samplable distribution admits a pseudorandom encoding. Under different cryptographic assumptions, we obtain positive and negative answers for different flavors of pseudorandom encodings, and relate this question to problems in other areas of cryptography. In particular, by establishing a two-way relation between pseudorandom encoding schemes and efficient invertible sampling algorithms, we reveal a connection between adaptively secure multi-party computation and questions in the domain of steganography.

Motivated by what we call "honest but lazy” parties in the context of secure multi party computation, we revisit the notion of multi-key FHE schemes (MFHE). In MFHE, any message encrypted using a public key pk_i can be "expanded" so that the resulting ciphertext is encrypted with respect to a set of public keys (pk_1,..,pk_n). Such expanded ciphertexts can be homomorphically evaluated with respect to any circuit to generate a ciphertext ct. Then, this ciphertext ct can be partially decrypted using a secret key sk_i (corresponding to the public key pk_i) to produce a partial decryption p_i. Finally, these partial decryptions {p_{i}}_{i in [n]} can be combined to recover the output. However, this definition of MFHE works only for n-out-of-n access structures and, thus, each node in the system is a point of failure. In the context of "honest but lazy” parties, it is necessary to be able to decrypt even when only given a subset of partial decryptions (say t out of n). In order to solve this problem, we introduce a new notion of multi-key FHE designed to handle arbitrary access patterns that can reconstruct the output. We call it a threshold multi-key FHE scheme (TMFHE). Our main contributions are the following: * We formally define and construct TMFHE for any access structure given by a monotone boolean formula, assuming LWE. * We construct the first simulation-extractable multi-string NIZK from polynomially hard LWE. * We use TMFHE and our multi-string NIZK to obtain the first round-optimal (three round) MPC protocol in the plain model with guaranteed output delivery secure against malicious adversaries or, more generally, mixed adversaries (which supports "honest but lazy” parties), assuming LWE. * Our MPC protocols simultaneously achieve security against the maximum number of corruptions under which guaranteed output delivery is achievable, depth-proportional communication complexity, and reusability.

Is it possible to measure a physical object in a way that makes the measurement signals unintelligible to an external observer? Alternatively, can one learn a natural concept by using a contrived training set that makes the labeled examples useless without the line of thought that has led to their choice? We initiate a study of “cryptographic sensing” problems of this type, presenting definitions, positive and negative results, and directions for further research.

We develop attacks on the security of variants of pseudo-random generators computed by quadratic polynomials. In particular we give a general condition for breaking the one-way property of mappings where every output is a quadratic polynomial (over the reals) of the input. As a corollary, we break the degree-2 candidates for security assumptions recently proposed for constructing indistinguishability obfuscation by Ananth, Jain and Sahai (ePrint 2018) and Agrawal (ePrint 2018). We present conjectures that would imply our attacks extend to a wider variety of instances, and in particular offer experimental evidence that they break assumption of Lin-Matt (ePrint 2018).Our algorithms use semidefinite programming, and in particular, results on low-rank recovery (Recht, Fazel, Parrilo 2007) and matrix completion (Gross 2009).

In this work, we introduce and construct D-restricted Functional Encryption (FE) for any constant $$D \ge 3$$D≥3, based only on the SXDH assumption over bilinear groups. This generalizes the notion of 3-restricted FE recently introduced and constructed by Ananth et al. (ePrint 2018) in the generic bilinear group model.A $$D=(d+2)$$D=(d+2)-restricted FE scheme is a secret key FE scheme that allows an encryptor to efficiently encrypt a message of the form $$M=(\varvec{x},\varvec{y},\varvec{z})$$M=(x,y,z). Here, $$\varvec{x}\in \mathbb {F}_{\mathbf {p}}^{d\times n}$$x∈Fpd×n and $$\varvec{y},\varvec{z}\in \mathbb {F}_{\mathbf {p}}^n$$y,z∈Fpn. Function keys can be issued for a function $$f=\varSigma _{\varvec{I}= (i_1,..,i_d,j,k)}\ c_{\varvec{I}}\cdot \varvec{x}[1,i_1] \cdots \varvec{x}[d,i_d] \cdot \varvec{y}[j]\cdot \varvec{z}[k]$$f=ΣI=(i1,..,id,j,k)cI·x[1,i1]⋯x[d,id]·y[j]·z[k] where the coefficients $$c_{\varvec{I}}\in \mathbb {F}_{\mathbf {p}}$$cI∈Fp. Knowing the function key and the ciphertext, one can learn $$f(\varvec{x},\varvec{y},\varvec{z})$$f(x,y,z), if this value is bounded in absolute value by some polynomial in the security parameter and n. The security requirement is that the ciphertext hides $$\varvec{y}$$y and $$\varvec{z}$$z, although it is not required to hide $$\varvec{x}$$x. Thus $$\varvec{x}$$x can be seen as a public attribute.D-restricted FE allows for useful evaluation of constant-degree polynomials, while only requiring the SXDH assumption over bilinear groups. As such, it is a powerful tool for leveraging hardness that exists in constant-degree expanding families of polynomials over $$\mathbb {R}$$R. In particular, we build upon the work of Ananth et al. to show how to build indistinguishability obfuscation ($$i\mathcal {O}$$iO) assuming only SXDH over bilinear groups, LWE, and assumptions relating to weak pseudorandom properties of constant-degree expanding polynomials over $$\mathbb {R}$$R.

In this work, we explore the question of simultaneous privacy and soundness amplification for non-interactive zero-knowledge argument systems (NIZK). We show that any $$\delta _s-$$sound and $$\delta _z-$$zero-knowledge NIZK candidate satisfying $$\delta _s+\delta _z=1-\epsilon $$, for any constant $$\epsilon >0$$, can be turned into a computationally sound and zero-knowledge candidate with the only extra assumption of a subexponentially secure public-key encryption.We develop novel techniques to leverage the use of leakage simulation lemma (Jetchev-Peitzrak TCC 2014) to argue amplification. A crucial component of our result is a new notion for secret sharing $$\mathsf {NP}$$ instances. We believe that this may be of independent interest.To achieve this result we analyze following two transformations:Parallel Repetition: We show that using parallel repetition any $$\delta _s-$$sound and $$\delta _z-$$zero-knowledge $$\mathsf {NIZK}$$ candidate can be turned into (roughly) $$\delta ^n_s-$$sound and $$1-(1-\delta _{z})^n-$$zero-knowledge candidate. Here n is the repetition parameter.MPC based Repetition: We propose a new transformation that amplifies zero-knowledge in the same way that parallel repetition amplifies soundness. We show that using this any $$\delta _s-$$sound and $$\delta _z-$$zero-knowledge $$\mathsf {NIZK}$$ candidate can be turned into (roughly) $$1-(1-\delta _s)^n-$$sound and $$2\cdot \delta ^n_{z}-$$zero-knowledge candidate. Then we show that using these transformations in a zig-zag fashion we can obtain our result. Finally, we also present a simple transformation which directly turns any $$\mathsf {NIZK}$$ candidate satisfying $$\delta _s,\delta _z<1/3 -1/\mathsf {poly}(\lambda )$$ to a secure one.

The existence of secure indistinguishability obfuscators ( $$i\mathcal {O}$$ ) has far-reaching implications, significantly expanding the scope of problems amenable to cryptographic study. All known approaches to constructing $$i\mathcal {O}$$ rely on d-linear maps. While secure bilinear maps are well established in cryptographic literature, the security of candidates for $$d>2$$ is poorly understood.We propose a new approach to constructing $$i\mathcal {O}$$ for general circuits. Unlike all previously known realizations of $$i\mathcal {O}$$ , we avoid the use of d-linear maps of degree $$d \ge 3$$ .At the heart of our approach is the assumption that a new weak pseudorandom object exists. We consider two related variants of these objects, which we call perturbation resilient generator ( $$\varDelta $$ RG) and pseudo flawed-smudging generator ( $$\mathrm {PFG}$$ ), respectively. At a high level, both objects are polynomially expanding functions whose outputs partially hide (or smudge) small noise vectors when added to them. We further require that they are computable by a family of degree-3 polynomials over $$\mathbb {Z}$$ . We show how they can be used to construct functional encryption schemes with weak security guarantees. Finally, we use novel amplification techniques to obtain full security.As a result, we obtain $$i\mathcal {O}$$ for general circuits assuming:Subexponentially secure LWEBilinear Maps $$\mathrm {poly}(\lambda )$$ -secure 3-block-local PRGs $$\varDelta $$ RGs or $$\mathrm {PFG}$$ s

Cryptographic combiners allow one to combine many candidates for a cryptographic primitive, possibly based on different computational assumptions, into another candidate with the guarantee that the resulting candidate is secure as long as at least one of the original candidates is secure. While the original motivation of cryptographic combiners was to reduce trust on existing candidates, in this work, we study a rather surprising implication of combiners to constructing secure multiparty computation protocols. Specifically, we initiate the study of functional encryption combiners and show its connection to secure multiparty computation.Functional encryption (FE) has incredible applications towards computing on encrypted data. However, constructing the most general form of this primitive has remained elusive. Although some candidate constructions exist, they rely on nonstandard assumptions, and thus, their security has been questioned. An FE combiner attempts to make use of these candidates while minimizing the trust placed on any individual FE candidate. Informally, an FE combiner takes in a set of FE candidates and outputs a secure FE scheme if at least one of the candidates is secure.Another fundamental area in cryptography is secure multi-party computation (MPC), which has been extensively studied for several decades. In this work, we initiate a formal study of the relationship between functional encryption (FE) combiners and secure multi-party computation (MPC). In particular, we show implications in both directions between these primitives. As a consequence of these implications, we obtain the following main results. A two-round semi-honest MPC protocol in the plain model secure against up to $$n-1$$ corruptions with communication complexity proportional only to the depth of the circuit being computed assuming learning with errors (LWE). Prior two round protocols based on standard assumptions that achieved this communication complexity required trust assumptions, namely, a common reference string.A functional encryption combiner based on pseudorandom generators (PRGs) in $$\mathsf {NC}^1$$. This is a weak assumption as such PRGs are implied by many concrete intractability problems commonly used in cryptography, such as ones related to factoring, discrete logarithm, and lattice problems [11]. Previous constructions of FE combiners, implicit in [7], were known only from LWE. Using this result, we build a universal construction of functional encryption: an explicit construction of functional encryption based only on the assumptions that functional encryption exists and PRGs in $$\mathsf {NC}^1$$.

In this work, we study the fascinating notion of output-compressing randomized encodings for Turing Machines, in a shared randomness model. In this model, the encoder and decoder have access to a shared random string, and the efficiency requirement is, the size of the encoding must be independent of the running time and output length of the Turing Machine on the given input, while the length of the shared random string is allowed to grow with the length of the output. We show how to construct output-compressing randomized encodings for Turing machines in the shared randomness model, assuming iO for circuits and any assumption in the set $$\{$$ LWE, DDH, N $$^{th}$$ Residuosity $$\}$$ .We then show interesting implications of the above result to basic feasibility questions in the areas of secure multiparty computation (MPC) and indistinguishability obfuscation (iO): 1.Compact MPC for Turing Machines in the Random Oracle Model. In the context of MPC, we consider the following basic feasibility question: does there exist a malicious-secure MPC protocol for Turing Machines whose communication complexity is independent of the running time and output length of the Turing Machine when executed on the combined inputs of all parties? We call such a protocol as a compact MPC protocol. Hubácek and Wichs [HW15] showed via an incompressibility argument, that, even for the restricted setting of circuits, it is impossible to construct a malicious secure two party computation protocol in the plain model where the communication complexity is independent of the output length. In this work, we show how to evade this impossibility by compiling any (non-compact) MPC protocol in the plain model to a compact MPC protocol for Turing Machines in the Random Oracle Model, assuming output-compressing randomized encodings in the shared randomness model.2.Succinct iO for Turing Machines in the Shared Randomness Model. In all existing constructions of iO for Turing Machines, the size of the obfuscated program grows with a bound on the input length. In this work, we show how to construct an iO scheme for Turing Machines in the shared randomness model where the size of the obfuscated program is independent of a bound on the input length, assuming iO for circuits and any assumption in the set $$\{$$ LWE, DDH, N $$^{th}$$ Residuosity $$\}$$ .

We consider the problem of protecting general computations against constant-rate random leakage. That is, the computation is performed by a randomized boolean circuit that maps a randomly encoded input to a randomly encoded output, such that even if the value of every wire is independently leaked with some constant probability $$p > 0$$ p>0, the leakage reveals essentially nothing about the input.In this work we provide a conceptually simple, modular approach for solving the above problem, providing a simpler and self-contained alternative to previous constructions of Ajtai (STOC 2011) and Andrychowicz et al. (Eurocrypt 2016). We also obtain several extensions and generalizations of this result. In particular, we show that for every leakage probability $$p<1$$ p<1, there is a finite basis $$\mathbb {B}$$ B such that leakage-resilient computation with leakage probability p can be realized using circuits over the basis $$\mathbb {B}$$ B. We obtain similar positive results for the stronger notion of leakage tolerance, where the input is not encoded, but the leakage from the entire computation can be simulated given random $$p'$$ p′-leakage of input values alone, for any $$p<p'<1$$ p<p′<1. Finally, we complement this by a negative result, showing that for every basis $$\mathbb {B}$$ B there is some leakage probability $$p<1$$ p<1 such that for any $$p'<1$$ p′<1, leakage tolerance as above cannot be achieved in general.We show that our modular approach is also useful for protecting computations against worst case leakage. In this model, we require that leakage of any $$\mathbf{t}$$ t (adversarially chosen) wires reveal nothing about the input. By combining our construction with a previous derandomization technique of Ishai et al. (ICALP 2013), we show that security in this setting can be achieved with $$O(\mathbf{t}^{1+\varepsilon })$$ O(t1+ε) random bits, for every constant $$\varepsilon > 0$$ ε>0. This (near-optimal) bound significantly improves upon previous constructions that required more than $$\mathbf{t}^{3}$$ t3 random bits.

We devise a new partitioned simulation technique for MPC where the simulator uses different strategies for simulating the view of aborting adversaries and non-aborting adversaries. The protagonist of this technique is a new notion of promise zero knowledge (ZK) where the ZK property only holds against non-aborting verifiers. We show how to realize promise ZK in three rounds in the simultaneous-message model assuming polynomially hard DDH (or QR or N$$^{th}$$-Residuosity).We demonstrate the following applications of our new technique:We construct the first round-optimal (i.e., four round) MPC protocol for general functions based on polynomially hard DDH (or QR or N$$^{th}$$-Residuosity).We further show how to overcome the four-round barrier for MPC by constructing a three-round protocol for “list coin-tossing” – a slight relaxation of coin-tossing that suffices for most conceivable applications – based on polynomially hard DDH (or QR or N$$^{th}$$-Residuosity). This result generalizes to randomized input-less functionalities. Previously, four round MPC protocols required sub-exponential-time hardness assumptions and no multi-party three-round protocols were known for any relaxed security notions with polynomial-time simulation against malicious adversaries.In order to base security on polynomial-time standard assumptions, we also rely upon a leveled rewinding security technique that can be viewed as a polynomial-time alternative to leveled complexity leveraging for achieving “non-malleability” across different primitives.

We develop a general approach to adding a threshold functionality to a large class of (non-threshold) cryptographic schemes. A threshold functionality enables a secret key to be split into a number of shares, so that only a threshold of parties can use the key, without reconstructing the key. We begin by constructing a threshold fully-homomorphic encryption scheme (ThFHE) from the learning with errors (LWE) problem. We next introduce a new concept, called a universal thresholdizer, from which many threshold systems are possible. We show how to construct a universal thresholdizer from our ThFHE. A universal thresholdizer can be used to add threshold functionality to many systems, such as CCA-secure public-key encryption (PKE), signature schemes, pseudorandom functions, and others primitives. In particular, by applying this paradigm to a (non-threshold) lattice signature system, we obtain the first single-round threshold signature scheme from LWE.

The notion of Functional Encryption (FE) has recently emerged as a strong primitive with several exciting applications. In this work, we initiate the study of the following question: Can existing public key encryption schemes be “upgraded” to Functional Encryption schemes without changing their public keys or the encryption algorithm? We call a public-key encryption scheme with this property to be FE-compatible. Indeed, assuming ideal obfuscation, it is easy to see that every CCA-secure public-key encryption scheme is FE-compatible. Despite the recent success in using indistinguishability obfuscation to replace ideal obfuscation for many applications, we show that this phenomenon most likely will not apply here. We show that assuming fully homomorphic encryption and the learning with errors (LWE) assumption, there exists a CCA-secure encryption scheme that is provably not FE-compatible. We also show that a large class of natural CCA-secure encryption schemes proven secure in the random oracle model are not FE-compatible in the random oracle model.Nevertheless, we identify a key structure that, if present, is sufficient to provide FE-compatibility. Specifically, we show that assuming sub-exponentially secure iO and sub-exponentially secure one way functions, there exists a class of public key encryption schemes which we call Special-CCA secure encryption schemes that are in fact, FE-compatible. In particular, each of the following popular CCA secure encryption schemes (some of which existed even before the notion of FE was introduced) fall into the class of Special-CCA secure encryption schemes and are thus FE-compatible:1.[CHK04] when instantiated with the IBE scheme of [BB04].2.[CHK04] when instantiated with any Hierarchical IBE scheme.3.[PW08] when instantiated with any Lossy Trapdoor Function.

Pseudorandom functions (PRFs) are one of the fundamental building blocks in cryptography. Traditionally, there have been two main approaches for PRF design: the “practitioner’s approach” of building concretely-efficient constructions based on known heuristics and prior experience, and the “theoretician’s approach” of proposing constructions and reducing their security to a previously-studied hardness assumption. While both approaches have their merits, the resulting PRF candidates vary greatly in terms of concrete efficiency and design complexity.In this work, we depart from these traditional approaches by exploring a new space of plausible PRF candidates. Our guiding principle is to maximize simplicity while optimizing complexity measures that are relevant to cryptographic applications. Our primary focus is on weak PRFs computable by very simple circuits—specifically, depth-2$$\mathsf {ACC}^0$$ circuits. Concretely, our main weak PRF candidate is a “piecewise-linear” function that first applies a secret mod-2 linear mapping to the input, and then a public mod-3 linear mapping to the result. We also put forward a similar depth-3 strong PRF candidate.The advantage of our approach is twofold. On the theoretical side, the simplicity of our candidates enables us to draw many natural connections between their hardness and questions in complexity theory or learning theory (e.g., learnability of $$\mathsf {ACC}^0$$ and width-3 branching programs, interpolation and property testing for sparse polynomials, and new natural proof barriers for showing super-linear circuit lower bounds). On the applied side, the piecewise-linear structure of our candidates lends itself nicely to applications in secure multiparty computation (MPC). Using our PRF candidates, we construct protocols for distributed PRF evaluation that achieve better round complexity and/or communication complexity (often both) compared to protocols obtained by combining standard MPC protocols with PRFs like AES, LowMC, or Rasta (the latter two are specialized MPC-friendly PRFs).Finally, we introduce a new primitive we call an encoded-input PRF, which can be viewed as an interpolation between weak PRFs and standard (strong) PRFs. As we demonstrate, an encoded-input PRF can often be used as a drop-in replacement for a strong PRF, combining the efficiency benefits of weak PRFs and the security benefits of strong PRFs. We conclude by showing that our main weak PRF candidate can plausibly be boosted to an encoded-input PRF by leveraging standard error-correcting codes.