Double-authentication-preventing signatures in the standard model

A double-authentication preventing signature (DAPS) scheme is a digital signature scheme equipped with a self-enforcement mechanism. Messages consist of an address and a payload component, and a signer is penalized if she signs two messages with the same addresses but different payloads. The penalty is the disclosure of the signer’s signing key. Most of the existing DAPS schemes are proved secure in the random oracle model (ROM), while the efficient ones in the standard model only support address spaces of polynomial size. We present DAPS schemes that are efficient, secure in the standard model under standard assumptions and support large address spaces. Our main construction builds on vector commitments (VC) and double-trapdoor chameleon hash functions (DCH). We also provide a DAPS realization from Groth–Sahai (GS) proofs that builds on a generic construction by Derler et al., which they instantiate in the ROM. The GS-based construction, while less efficient than our main one, shows that a general yet efficient instantiation of DAPS in the standard model is possible. An interesting feature of our main construction is that it can be easily modified to guarantee security even in the most challenging setting where no trusted setup is provided. To the best of our knowledge, ours seems to be the first construction achieving this in the standard model.

Separation for dot-depth two

The dot-depth hierarchy of Brzozowski and Cohen classifies the star-free languages of finite words. By a theorem of McNaughton and Papert, these are also the first-order definable languages. The dot-depth rose to prominence following the work of Thomas, who proved an exact correspondence with the quantifier alternation hierarchy of first-order logic: each level in the dot-depth hierarchy consists of all languages that can be defined with a prescribed number of quantifier blocks. One of the most famous open problems in automata theory is to settle whether the membership problem is decidable for each level: is it possible to decide whether an input regular language belongs to this level? Despite a significant research effort, membership by itself has only been solved for low levels. A recent breakthrough was achieved by replacing membership with a more general problem: separation. Given two input languages, one has to decide whether there exists a third language in the investigated level containing the first language and disjoint from the second. The motivation is that: (1) while more difficult, separation is more rewarding (2) it provides a more convenient framework (3) all recent membership algorithms are reductions to separation for lower levels. We present a separation algorithm for dot-depth two. While this is our most prominent application, our result is more general. We consider a family of hierarchies that includes the dot-depth: concatenation hierarchies. They are built via a generic construction process. One first chooses an initial class, the basis, which is the lowest level in the hierarchy. Further levels are built by applying generic operations. Our main theorem states that for any concatenation hierarchy whose basis is finite, separation is decidable for level one. In the special case of the dot-depth, this can be lifted to level two using previously known results.

Efficient identity-based encryption with Hierarchical key-insulation from HIBE

Hierarchical key-insulated identity-based encryption (HKIBE) is identity-based encryption (IBE) that allows users to update their secret keys to achieve (hierarchical) key-exposure resilience, which is an important notion in practice. However, existing HKIBE constructions have limitations in efficiency: sizes of ciphertexts and secret keys depend on the hierarchical depth. In this paper, we first triumph over the barrier by proposing simple but effective design methodologies to construct efficient HKIBE schemes. First, we show a generic construction from any hierarchical IBE (HIBE) scheme that satisfies a special requirement, called MSK evaluatability introduced by Emura et al. (Des. Codes Cryptography 89(7):1535–1574, 2021). It provides several new and efficient instantiations since most pairing-based HIBE schemes satisfy the requirement. It is worth noting that it preserves all parameters’ sizes of the underlying HIBE scheme, and hence we obtain several efficient HKIBE schemes under the k-linear assumption in the standard model. Since MSK evaluatability is dedicated to pairing-based HIBE schemes, the first construction restricts pairing-based instantiations. To realize efficient instantiation from various assumptions, we next propose a generic construction of an HKIBE scheme from any plain HIBE scheme. It is based on Hanaoka et al.’s HKIBE scheme (Asiacrypt 2005), and does not need any special properties. Therefore, we obtain new efficient instantiations from various assumptions other than pairing-oriented ones. Though the sizes of secret keys and ciphertexts are larger than those of the first construction, it is more efficient than Hanaoka et al.’s scheme in the sense of the sizes of master public/secret keys.

Publicly Traceable Attribute-Based Anonymous Authentication and Its Application to Voting

Numerous anonymous authentication schemes are designed to provide efficient authentication services while preserving privacy. Such schemes may easily neglect access control and accountability, which are two requirements that play an important role in some particular environments and applications. Prior designs of attribute-based anonymous authentication schemes did not concentrate on providing full anonymity while at the same time holding public traceability. To address this problem, we formally define and present a new primitive called traceable attribute-based anonymous authentication (TABAA) which achieves (i) full anonymity, i.e., both registration and authentication cannot reveal user’s privacy; (ii) reusable credential, i.e., a registered credential can be repeatedly used without being linked; (iii) access control, i.e., only when the user’s attribute satisfies the access policy can the user be involved in authentication; and (iv) public traceability, i.e., anyone, without help from the trusted third party, can trace a misbehaving user who has authenticated two messages corresponding to a common address. Then, we formally define the security requirements of TABAA, including unforgeability, anonymity, and accountability, and give a generic construction satisfying the security requirements. Furthermore, based on TABAA, we propose the first attribute-based, decentralized, fully anonymous, publicly traceable e-voting, which enables voters to engage in a number of different voting activities without repeated registration.

Privacy-Preserving Approximate k-Nearest-Neighbors Search that Hides Access, Query and Volume Patterns

We study the problem of privacy-preserving approximate kNN search in an outsourced environment — the client sends the encrypted data to an untrusted server and later can perform secure approximate kNN search and updates. We design a security model and propose a generic construction based on locality-sensitive hashing, symmetric encryption, and an oblivious map. The construction provides very strong security guarantees, not only hiding the information about the data, but also the access, query, and volume patterns. We implement, evaluate efficiency, and compare the performance of two concrete schemes based on an oblivious AVL tree and an oblivious BSkiplist.