International Association
for Cryptologic Research

Is it possible to prove the deletion of a computer program after having executed it? While this task is clearly impossible using classical information alone, the laws of quantum mechanics may admit a solution to this problem. In this work, we propose a new approach to answer this question, using quantum information. In the interactive settings, we present the first fully-secure solution for blind delegation with certified deletion, assuming post-quantum hardness of the learning with errors (LWE) problem. In the non-interactive settings, we propose a construction of obfuscation with certified deletion, assuming post-quantum iO and one-way functions. Our main technical contribution is a new deletion theorem for subspace coset states [Vidick and Zhang, EUROCRYPT'21, Coladangelo et al., CRYPTO'21], which enables a generic compiler that adds the certified deletion guarantee to a variety of cryptographic primitives. In addition to our main result, this allows us to obtain a host of new primitives, such as functional encryption with certified deletion and secure software leasing for an interesting class of programs. In fact, we are able for the first time to achieve a stronger notion of secure software leasing, where even a dishonest evaluator cannot evaluate the program after returning it.

A non-interactive ZK (NIZK) proof enables verification of NP statements without revealing secrets about them. However, an adversary that obtains a NIZK proof may be able to clone this proof and distribute arbitrarily many copies of it to various entities: this is inevitable for any proof that takes the form of a classical string. In this paper, we ask whether it is possible to rely on quantum information in order to build NIZK proof systems that are impossible to clone. We define and construct unclonable non-interactive zero-knowledge arguments (of knowledge) for NP, addressing a question first posed by Aaronson (CCC 2009). Besides satisfying the zero-knowledge and argument of knowledge properties, these proofs additionally satisfy unclonability. Very roughly, this ensures that no adversary can split an honestly generated proof of membership of an instance x in an NP language L and distribute copies to multiple entities that all obtain accepting proofs of membership of x in L. Our result has applications to unclonable signatures of knowledge, which we define and construct in this work; these non-interactively prevent replay attacks.

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

We develop a simple compiler that generically adds publicly-verifiable deletion to a variety of cryptosystems. Our compiler only makes use of one-way functions (or one-way state generators, if we allow the public verification key to be quantum). Previously, similar compilers either relied on indistinguishability obfuscation along with any one-way function (Bartusek et. al., ePrint:2023/265), or on almost-regular one-way functions (Bartusek, Khurana and Poremba, CRYPTO 2023).

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.

We obtain a black-box construction of non-interactive CCA commitments against non-uniform adversaries. This makes black-box use of an appropriate base commitment scheme for small tag spaces, variants of sub-exponential hinting PRG (Koppula and Waters, Crypto 2019) and variants of keyless sub-exponentially collision-resistant hash function with security against non-uniform adversaries (Bitansky, Kalai and Paneth, STOC 2018 and Bitansky and Lin, TCC 2018). All prior works on non-interactive non-malleable or CCA commitments without setup first construct a ``base'' scheme for a relatively small identity/tag space, and then build a tag amplification compiler to obtain commitments for an exponential-sized space of identities. Prior black-box constructions either add multiple rounds of interaction (Goyal, Lee, Ostrovsky and Visconti, FOCS 2012) or only achieve security against uniform adversaries (Garg, Khurana, Lu and Waters, Eurocrypt 2021). Our key technical contribution is a novel tag amplification compiler for CCA commitments that replaces the non-interactive proof of consistency required in prior work. Our construction satisfies the strongest known definition of non-malleability, i.e., CCA2 (chosen commitment attack) security. In addition to only making black-box use of the base scheme, our construction replaces sub-exponential NIWIs with sub-exponential hinting PRGs, which can be obtained based on assumptions such as (sub-exponential) CDH or LWE.

We present a new template for building oblivious transfer from quantum information that we call the "fixed basis'' framework. Our framework departs from prior work (eg., Crepeau and Kilian, FOCS '88) by fixing the *correct* choice of measurement basis used by each player, except for some hidden *trap* qubits that are intentionally measured in a conjugate basis. We instantiate this template in the quantum random oracle model (QROM) to obtain simple protocols that implement, with security against malicious adversaries: 1. *Non-interactive* random-input bit OT in a model where parties share EPR pairs a priori. 2. Two-round random-input bit OT without setup, obtained by showing that the protocol above remains secure even if the (potentially malicious) OT receiver sets up the EPR pairs. 3. Three-round chosen-input string OT from BB84 states without entanglement or setup. This improves upon natural variations of the CK88 template that require at least five rounds. Along the way, we develop technical tools that may be of independent interest. We prove that natural functions like XOR enable *seedless* randomness extraction from certain quantum sources of entropy. We also use idealized (i.e. extractable and equivocal) bit commitments, which we obtain by proving security of simple and efficient constructions in the QROM.

We propose a new, unifying framework that yields an array of cryptographic primitives with certified deletion. These primitives enable a party in possession of a quantum ciphertext to generate a classical certificate that the encrypted plaintext has been information-theoretically deleted, and cannot be recovered even given unbounded computational resources. - For $X \in \{\mathsf{public}\text{-}\mathsf{key},\mathsf{attribute\text{-}based},\mathsf{fully\text{-}homomorphic},\mathsf{witness},\mathsf{timed}\text{-}\mathsf{release}\}$, our compiler converts any (post-quantum) $X$ encryption to $X$ encryption with certified deletion. In addition, we compile statistically-binding commitments to statistically-binding commitments with certified everlasting hiding. As a corollary, we also obtain statistically-sound zero-knowledge proofs for QMA with certified everlasting zero-knowledge assuming statistically-binding commitments. - We also obtain a strong form of everlasting security for two-party and multi-party computation in the dishonest majority setting. While simultaneously achieving everlasting security against \emph{all} parties in this setting is known to be impossible, we introduce {\em everlasting security transfer (EST)}. This enables \emph{any one} party (or a subset of parties) to dynamically and certifiably information-theoretically delete other participants' data after protocol execution. We construct general-purpose secure computation with EST assuming statistically-binding commitments, which can be based on one-way functions or pseudorandom quantum states. We obtain our results by developing a novel proof technique to argue that a bit $b$ has been {\em information-theoretically deleted} from an adversary's view once they output a valid deletion certificate, despite having been previously {\em information-theoretically determined} by the ciphertext they held in their view. This technique may be of independent interest.

Can a sender non-interactively transmit one of two strings to a receiver without knowing which was received? Does there exist minimally-interactive secure computation without the use of public-key primitives? We provide affirmative answers to these questions in a model where parties have access to shared EPR pairs, thus demonstrating the cryptographic power of this resource. - First, we construct one-shot string oblivious transfer (OT) in the shared EPR pair model, assuming the sub-exponential hardness of LWE. Building on this, we show that {\em secure teleportation} is possible: Given the description of any quantum operation $Q$, a sender with input $\rho$ can send a single classical message that securely transmits $Q(\rho)$ to a receiver. That is, we realize an ideal channel that takes input $\rho$ from the sender and provably delivers $Q(\rho)$ to the receiver without revealing any other information, achieving one-shot secure computation of unidirectional quantum functionalities in the shared EPR pair model. This immediately gives a number of applications in the shared EPR pair model: (1) We obtain one-shot secure computation of unidirectional \emph{classical} functionalities, (2) We obtain the first construction of NIZK for QMA from (sub-exponential) standard assumptions, and (3) We define a notion of \emph{zero-knowledge} state synthesis, and show that it can be achieved with one message. - Next, we investigate general-purpose secure \emph{multiparty} computation in the shared EPR pair model. Here, we obtain a (round-optimal) two-round protocol for secure computation of classical functionalities that is \emph{unconditionally-secure} in the (quantum-accessible) random oracle model. We also obtain a two-round protocol without random oracles assuming (non-interactive) extractable commitments and correlation-intractability for efficient functions. At the heart of our approach are novel techniques for making use of entangling operations to generate multibit OT correlations, and for instantiating the Fiat-Shamir transform using correlation-intractability in the quantum setting.

This work re-examines the goal of building cryptosystems with publicly-verifiable deletion. We introduce target-collapsing as a weakening of collapsing, analogous to how second preimage resistance weakens collision resistance. That is, target-collapsing requires indistinguishability between superpositions and mixtures of preimages of an honestly sampled image. We show that target-collapsing hashes enable publicly-verifiable deletion, proving conjectures from [Poremba, ITCS'23] and demonstrating that the Dual-Regev encryption (and corresponding FHE) schemes support $\PVD$ under the learning with errors assumption. We build on this framework to obtain a variety of primitives supporting publicly-verifiable deletion ($\PVD$) from weak cryptographic assumptions, including: - Commitments with $\PVD$ assuming the existence of injective one-way functions, or more generally, {\em almost-regular} one-way functions. Along the way, we demonstrate that (partial) target-collapsing hashes can be built from almost-regular one-way functions. - Public-key encryption with $\PVD$ assuming trapdoored variants of injective (or almost-regular) one-way functions. - Public-key encryption with $\PVD$ assuming pseudorandom group actions, by demonstrating that the scheme of [Hhan, Morimae, and Yamakawa, Eurocrypt'23] has $\PVD$. - $X$ with $\PVD$ for $X \in \{$attribute-based encryption, quantum fully-homomorphic encryption, witness encryption, time-revocable encryption$\}$, assuming $X$ and trapdoored variants of injective (or almost-regular) one-way functions.

Obtaining three round zero-knowledge from standard cryptographic assumptions has remained a challenging open problem. Meanwhile, there has been exciting progress in realizing useful relaxations such as weak zero-knowledge, strong witness indistinguishability and witness hiding in two or three rounds. In particular, known realizations from generic assumptions obtain: (1) security against {\em adaptive} verifiers assuming fully homomorphic encryption among other standard assumptions (Bitansky et. al., STOC 2019), and (2) security against {\em non-adaptive} verifiers in the distributional setting from oblivious transfer (Jain et. al., Crypto 2017). This work builds three round weak zero-knowledge for NP in the non-adaptive setting from doubly-enhanced injective trapdoor functions. We obtain this result by developing a new distinguisher-dependent simulation technique that makes crucial use of the Goldreich-Levin list decoding algorithm, and may be of independent interest.

We study the problem of verifiably outsourcing computation in a model where the verifier has black-box access to the function being computed. We introduce the problem of oracle-aided batch verification of computation (OBVC) for a function class F. This allows a verifier to efficiently verify the correctness of any f \in F evaluated on a batch of n instances x_1, ...., x_n, while only making \lambda calls to an oracle for f (along with O(n \lambda) calls to low-complexity helper oracles), where \lambda denotes a security parameter. We obtain the following positive and negative results: 1. We build OBVC protocols for the class F of all functions that admit random-self-reductions. Some of our protocols rely on homomorphic encryption schemes. 2. We show that there cannot exist OBVC schemes for the class F of all functions mapping \lambda-bit inputs to \lambda-bit outputs, for any n = \poly(\lambda).

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''.

We obtain publicly verifiable Succinct Non-Interactive Arguments (SNARGs) for arbitrary deterministic computations and bounded space non-deterministic computation from well-studied group-based assumptions. In particular, assuming the sub-exponential hardness of the Decisional Diffie-Hellman (DDH) and Quadratic Residuosity (QR) assumptions, we obtain the following results, where n denotes the length of the instance: 1. A SNARG for any language that can be decided in non-deterministic time T and space S with communication complexity and verifier runtime(n+S)·T^{o(1)}. 2. A SNARG for any language that can be decided in deterministic time T with communication complexity n·T^{o(1)} and verifier runtime n·T^{o(1)}.

We put forth a new paradigm for program obfuscation, where obfuscated programs are endowed with proofs of ``well formedness.'' In addition to asserting existence of an underlying plaintext program with an attested structure, these proofs also prevent mauling attacks, whereby an adversary surreptitiously creates an obfuscated program based on secrets which are embedded in other obfuscated programs. We call this new guarantee Chosen Obfuscation Attacks (COA) security. We show how to enhance a large class of obfuscation mechanisms to be COA-secure, assuming subexponentially secure IO for circuits and subexponentially secure one-way functions.To demonstrate the power of the new notion, we also use it to realize: - A new form of software watermarking, which provides significantly broader protection than current schemes against counterfeits that pass a keyless, public verification process. - Completely CCA encryption, which is a strengthening of completely non-malleable encryption.

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}

We prove that quantum-hard one-way functions imply simulation-secure quantum oblivious transfer (QOT), which is known to suffice for secure computation of arbitrary quantum functionalities. Furthermore, our construction only makes black-box use of the quantum-hard one-way function. Our primary technical contribution is a construction of extractable and equivocal quantum bit commitments based on the black-box use of quantum-hard one-way functions in the standard model. Instantiating the Crépeau-Kilian (FOCS 1988) framework with these commitments yields simulation-secure quantum oblivious transfer.

We initiate the study of multi-party computation for classical functionalities in the plain model, with security against malicious quantum adversaries. We observe that existing techniques readily give a polynomial-round protocol, but our main result is a construction of *constant-round* post-quantum multi-party computation. We assume mildly super-polynomial quantum hardness of learning with errors (LWE), and quantum polynomial hardness of an LWE-based circular security assumption. Along the way, we develop the following cryptographic primitives that may be of independent interest: 1.) A spooky encryption scheme for relations computable by quantum circuits, from the quantum hardness of (a circular variant of) the LWE problem. This immediately yields the first quantum multi-key fully-homomorphic encryption scheme with classical keys. 2.) A constant-round post-quantum non-malleable commitment scheme, from the mildly super-polynomial quantum hardness of LWE. To prove the security of our protocol, we develop a new straight-line non-black-box simulation technique against parallel sessions that does not clone the adversary's state. This technique may also be relevant to the classical setting.

There has been recent exciting progress in building non-interactive non-malleable commitments from judicious assumptions. All proposed approaches proceed in two steps. First, obtain simple “base” commitment schemes for very small tag/identity spaces based on a various sub-exponential hardness assumptions. Next, assuming sub-exponential non-interactive witness indistinguishable proofs (NIWIs), and variants of keyless collision-resistant hash functions, construct non-interactive compilers that convert tag-based non-malleable commitments for a small tag space into tag-based non-malleable commitments for a larger tag space. We propose the first black-box construction of non-interactive non-malleable commitments. Our key technical contribution is a novel implementation of the non-interactive proof of consistency required for tag amplification. Prior to our work, the only known approach to tag amplification without setup and with black-box use of the base scheme (Goyal, Lee, Ostrovsky, and Visconti, FOCS 2012) added multiple rounds of interaction. Our construction satisfies the strongest known definition of non-malleability, i.e., CCA (chosen commitment attack) security. In addition to being black-box, our approach dispenses with the need for sub-exponential NIWIs, that was common to all prior work. Instead of NIWIs, we rely on sub-exponential hinting PRGs which can be obtained based on a broad set of assumptions such as sub-exponential CDH or LWE.

We introduce non-interactive distributionally indistinguishable arguments (NIDI) to remedy a significant weakness of NIWI proofs: namely, the lack of meaningful secrecy when proving statements about NP languages with unique witnesses. NIDI arguments allow a prover $\cP$ to send a single message to verifier $\cV$, given which $\cV$ can obtain a sample $d$ from a (secret) distribution $\cD$ together with a proof of membership of $d$ in an NP language. The soundness guarantee is that if the sample $d$ obtained by the verifier $\cV$ is not in the language, then $\cV$ outputs $\bot$. The secrecy guarantee is that secrets about the distribution remain hidden: for every pair of (sufficiently) hard-to-distinguish distributions $\cD_0$ and $\cD_1$, a NIDI that outputs samples from $\cD_0$ with proofs is indistinguishable from one that outputs samples from $\cD_1$ with proofs. We build NIDI arguments that satisfy secrecy for sufficiently hard distributions, assuming sub-exponential indistinguishability obfuscation and sub-exponentially secure (variants of) one-way functions. We demonstrate preliminary applications of NIDI and of our techniques to obtaining the first (relaxed) non-interactive constructions in the plain model, from well-founded assumptions, of: -- Commit-and-prove that provably hides the committed message -- CCA-secure commitments against non-uniform adversaries. The commit phase of our commitment schemes consists of a single message from the committer to the receiver, followed by a randomized output by the receiver (that need not be sent to the committer).

In this work, we put forth the notion of compatibility of any key generation or setup algorithm. We focus on the specific case of encryption, and say that a key generation algorithm KeyGen is X-compatible (for X \in {CPA, CCA1, CCA2}) if there exist encryption and decryption algorithms that together with KeyGen, result in an X-secure public-key encryption scheme. We study the following question: Is every CPA-compatible key generation algorithm also CCA-compatible? We obtain the following answers: - Every sub-exponentially CPA-compatible KeyGen algorithm is CCA1-compatible, assuming the existence of hinting PRGs and sub-exponentially secure keyless collision resistant hash functions. - Every sub-exponentially CPA-compatible KeyGen algorithm is also CCA2-compatible, assuming the existence of non-interactive CCA2 secure commitments, in addition to sub-exponential security of the assumptions listed in the previous bullet. Here, sub-exponentially CPA-compatible KeyGen refers to any key generation algorithm for which there exist encryption and decryption algorithms that result in a CPA-secure public-key encryption scheme {\em against sub-exponential adversaries}. This gives a way to perform CCA secure encryption given any public key infrastructure that has been established with only (sub-exponential) CPA security in mind. The resulting CCA encryption makes black-box use of the CPA scheme and all other underlying primitives.

Recent exciting breakthroughs have achieved the first two-source extractors that operate in the low min-entropy regime. Unfortunately, these constructions suffer from non-negligible error, and reducing the error to negligible remains an important open problem. In recent work, Garg, Kalai, and Khurana (GKK, Eurocrypt 2020) investigated a meaningful relaxation of this problem to the computational setting, in the presence of a common random string (CRS). In this relaxed model, their work built explicit two-source extractors for a restricted class of unbalanced sources with min-entropy n^{\gamma} (for some constant \gamma) and negligible error, under the sub-exponential DDH assumption. In this work, we investigate whether computational extractors in the CRS model be applied to more challenging environments. Specifically, we study network extractor protocols (Kalai et al., FOCS 2008) and extractors for adversarial sources (Chattopadhyay et al., STOC 2020) in the CRS model. We observe that these settings require extractors that work well for balanced sources, making the GKK results inapplicable. We remedy this situation by obtaining the following results, all of which are in the CRS model and assume the sub-exponential hardness of DDH. - We obtain ``optimal'' computational two-source and non-malleable extractors for balanced sources: requiring both sources to have only poly-logarithmic min-entropy, and achieving negligible error. To obtain this result, we perform a tighter and arguably simpler analysis of the GKK extractor. - We obtain a single-round network extractor protocol for poly-logarithmic min-entropy sources that tolerates an optimal number of adversarial corruptions. Prior work in the information-theoretic setting required sources with high min-entropy rates, and in the computational setting had round complexity that grew with the number of parties, required sources with linear min-entropy, and relied on exponential hardness (albeit without a CRS). - We obtain an ``optimal'' adversarial source extractor for poly-logarithmic min-entropy sources, where the number of honest sources is only 2 and each corrupted source can depend on either one of the honest sources. Prior work in the information-theoretic setting had to assume a large number of honest sources.

We construct the first constant-round protocols for secure quantum computation in the two-party (2PQC) and multi-party (MPQC) settings with security against malicious adversaries. Our protocols are in the common random string (CRS) model. - Assuming two-message oblivious transfer (OT), we obtain (i) three-message 2PQC, and (ii) five-round MPQC with only three rounds of online (input-dependent) communication; such OT is known from quantum-hard Learning with Errors (QLWE). - Assuming sub-exponential hardness of QLWE, we obtain (i) three-round 2PQC with two online rounds and (ii) four-round MPQC with two online rounds. - When only one (out of two) parties receives output, we achieve minimal interaction (two messages) from two-message OT; classically, such protocols are known as non-interactive secure computation (NISC), and our result constitutes the first maliciously-secure quantum NISC. Additionally assuming reusable malicious designated-verifier NIZK arguments for NP (MDV-NIZKs), we give the first MDV-NIZK for QMA that only requires one copy of the quantum witness. Finally, we perform a preliminary investigation into two-round secure quantum computation where each party must obtain output. On the negative side, we identify a broad class of simulation strategies that suffice for classical two-round secure computation that are unlikely to work in the quantum setting. Next, as a proof-of-concept, we show that two-round secure quantum computation exists with respect to a quantum oracle.

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.

Ring signatures allow a user to sign a message on behalf of a ``ring'' of signers, while hiding the true identity of the signer. As the degree of anonymity guaranteed by a ring signature is directly proportional to the size of the ring, an important goal in cryptography is to study constructions that minimize the size of the signature as a function of the number of ring members. In this work, we present the first compact ring signature scheme (i.e., where the size of the signature grows logarithmically with the size of the ring) from the (plain) learning with errors (LWE) problem. The construction is in the standard model and it does not rely on a trusted setup or on the random oracle heuristic. In contrast with the prior work of Backes \etal~[EUROCRYPT'2019], our scheme does not rely on bilinear pairings, which allows us to show that the scheme is post-quantum secure assuming the quantum hardness of LWE. At the heart of our scheme is a new construction of compact and statistically witness-indistinguishable ZAP arguments for NP $\cap$ coNP, that we show to be sound based on the plain LWE assumption. Prior to our work, statistical ZAPs (for all of NP) were known to exist only assuming \emph{sub-exponential} LWE. We believe that this scheme might find further applications in the future.

We propose the first maliciously secure multi-party computation (MPC) protocol for general functionalities in two rounds, without any trusted setup. Since polynomial-time simulation is impossible in two rounds, we achieve the relaxed notion of superpolynomial-time simulation security [Pass, EUROCRYPT 2003]. Prior to our work, no such maliciously secure protocols were known even in the two-party setting for functionalities where both parties receive outputs. Our protocol is based on the sub-exponential security of standard assumptions plus a special type of non-interactive non-malleable commitment. At the heart of our approach is a two-round multi-party conditional disclosure of secrets (MCDS) protocol in the plain model from bilinear maps, which is constructed from techniques introduced in [Benhamouda and Lin, TCC 2020].

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.

In recent years, there has been exciting progress on building two-source extractors for sources with low min-entropy. Unfortunately, all known explicit constructions of two-source extractors in the low entropy regime suffer from non-negligible error, and building such extractors with negligible error remains an open problem. We investigate this problem in the computational setting, and obtain the following results. We construct an explicit 2-source extractor, and even an explicit non-malleable extractor, with negligible error, for sources with low min-entropy, under computational assumptions in the Common Random String (CRS) model. More specifically, we assume that a CRS is generated once and for all, and allow the min-entropy sources to depend on the CRS. We obtain our constructions by using the following transformations. - Building on the technique of [BHK11], we show a general transformation for converting any computational 2-source extractor (in the CRS model) into a computational non-malleable extractor (in the CRS model), for sources with similar min-entropy. We emphasize that the resulting computational non-malleable extractor is resilient to arbitrarily many tampering attacks (a property that is impossible to achieve information theoretically). This may be of independent interest. This transformation uses cryptography, and in particular relies on the sub-exponential hardness of the Decisional Diffie Hellman (DDH) assumption. - Next, using the blueprint of [BACD+17], we give a transformation converting our computational non-malleable extractor (in the CRS model) into a computational 2-source extractor for sources with low min-entropy (in the CRS model). Our 2-source extractor works for unbalanced sources: specifically, we require one of the sources to be larger than a specific polynomial in the other. This transformation does not incur any additional assumptions. Our analysis makes a novel use of the leakage lemma of Gentry and Wichs [GW11].

There has been a large body of work characterizing the round complexity of general-purpose maliciously secure two-party computation (2PC) against probabilistic polynomial time adversaries. This is particularly true for zero-knowledge, which is a special case of 2PC. In fact, in the special case of zero knowledge, optimal protocols with unconditional security against one of the two players have also been meticulously studied and constructed. On the other hand, general-purpose maliciously secure 2PC with statistical or unconditional security against one of the two participants, has remained largely unexplored so far. In this work, we initiate the study of such protocols, which we refer to as 2PC with one-sided statistical security. We completely settle the round complexity of 2PC with one-sided statistical security with respect to black-box simulation by obtaining the following tight results: - In a setting where only one party obtains an output, we design 2PC in 4 rounds with statistical security against receivers and computational security against senders. - In a setting where both parties obtain outputs, we design 2PC in 5 rounds with computational security against the party that obtains output first and statistical security against the party that obtains output last. Katz and Ostrovsky (CRYPTO 2004) showed that 2PC with black-box simulation requires at least 4 rounds when one party obtains an output and 5 rounds when both parties obtain outputs, even when only computational security is desired against both parties. Thus in these settings, not only are our results tight, but they also show that statistical security is achievable at no extra cost to round complexity. This still leaves open the question of whether 2PC can be achieved with black-box simulation in 4 rounds with statistical security against senders and computational security against receivers. Based on a lower bound on computational zero-knowledge proofs due to Katz (TCC 2008), we observe that the answer is negative unless the polynomial hierarchy collapses.

We construct non-interactive non-malleable commitments without setup in the plain model, under well-studied assumptions.First, we construct non-interactive non-malleable commitments w.r.t. commitment for $$\epsilon \log \log n$$ tags for a small constant $$\epsilon > 0$$, under the following assumptions:1.Sub-exponential hardness of factoring or discrete log.2.Quantum sub-exponential hardness of learning with errors (LWE). Second, as our key technical contribution, we introduce a new tag amplification technique. We show how to convert any non-interactive non-malleable commitment w.r.t. commitment for $$\epsilon \log \log n$$ tags (for any constant $$\epsilon >0$$) into a non-interactive non-malleable commitment w.r.t. replacement for $$2^n$$ tags. This part only assumes the existence of sub-exponentially secure non-interactive witness indistinguishable (NIWI) proofs, which can be based on sub-exponential security of the decisional linear assumption.Interestingly, for the tag amplification technique, we crucially rely on the leakage lemma due to Gentry and Wichs (STOC 2011). For the construction of non-malleable commitments for $$\epsilon \log \log n$$ tags, we rely on quantum supremacy. This use of quantum supremacy in classical cryptography is novel, and we believe it will have future applications. We provide one such application to two-message witness indistinguishable (WI) arguments from (quantum) polynomial hardness assumptions.

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.

Motivated by theoretical and practical considerations, an important line of research is to design secure computation protocols that only make black-box use of cryptography. An important component in nearly all the black-box secure computation constructions is a black-box commit-and-prove protocol. A commit-and-prove protocol allows a prover to commit to a value and prove a statement about this value while guaranteeing that the committed value remains hidden. A black-box commit-and-prove protocol implements this functionality while only making black-box use of cryptography.In this paper, we build several tools that enable constructions of round-optimal, black-box commit and prove protocols. In particular, assuming injective one-way functions, we design the first round-optimal, black-box commit-and-prove arguments of knowledge satisfying strong privacy against malicious verifiers, namely:Zero-knowledge in four rounds and,Witness indistinguishability in three rounds. Prior to our work, the best known black-box protocols achieving commit-and-prove required more rounds.We additionally ensure that our protocols can be used, if needed, in the delayed-input setting, where the statement to be proven is decided only towards the end of the interaction. We also observe simple applications of our protocols towards achieving black-box four-round constructions of extractable and equivocal commitments.We believe that our protocols will provide a useful tool enabling several new constructions and easy round-efficient conversions from non-black-box to black-box protocols in the future.

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.