When communicating over a noisy channel, it is typically much easier to deal with random, independent errors with a known distribution than with adversarial errors. This paper looks at how one can use schemes designed for random errors in an adversarial context, at the cost of relatively few additional random bits and without using unproven computational assumptions. The basic approach is to permute the positions of a bit string using a permutation drawn from a $t$-wise independent family, where $t=o(n)$. This leads to two new results: 1. We construct *computationally efficient* information reconciliation protocols correcting $pn$ adversarial binary Hamming errors with optimal communication and entropy loss $n(h(p)+o(1))$ bits, where $n$ is the length of the strings and $h()$ is the binary entropy function. Information reconciliation protocols are important tools for dealing with noisy secrets in cryptography; they are also used to synchronize remote copies of large files. 2. We improve the randomness complexity (key length) of efficiently decodable capacity-approaching "private codes" from $\Theta(n\log n)$ to $n+o(n)$. We also present a simplified proof of an existential result on private codes due to Langberg (FOCS '04).

Since stream ciphers have the reputation to be inefficient in software applications the new stream cipher Hermes8 has been developed. It is based on a 8-bit-architecture and an algorithm with low complexity. The two versions presented here are Hermes8-80 with 23 byte state and 10 byte key and furthermore Hermes8-128 with 37 byte state and 16 byte key. Both are suited to run efficiently on 8-bit micro computers and dedicated hardware (e.g. for embedded systems). The estimated performance is up to one encrypted byte per 118 CPU cycles and one encrypted byte per nine cycles in hardware. The clarity and low complexity of the design supports cryptanalytic methods. The 8x8 sized S-BOX provides the non-linear function needed for proper confusion. Hermes8 uses the well-established AES S-BOX, but works also excellent with well-designed random S-BOXes. Hermes8 withstands so far several attacks by means of statistical tests, e.g. the Strict Avalanche Criterion and FIPS 140-2 are met successfully.

It has been noted recently that algebraic (annihilator) immunity alone does not provide sufficient resistance against algebraic attacks. In this regard, given a Boolean function $f$, just checking the minimum degree annihilators of $f, 1+f$ is not enough and one should check the relationsips of the form $fg = h$, and a function $f$, even if it has very good algebraic immunity, is not necessarily good against fast algebraic attack, if degree of $g$ becomes very low when degree of $h$ is equal to or little greater than the algebraic immunity of $f$. In this paper we theoretically study the two currently known constructions having maximum possible algebraic immunity from this viewpoint. To the end, we also experimentally study some cryptographically significant functions having good algebraic immunity.

We construct a reasonably efficient threshold and proactive pseudo-random permutation (PRP). Our protocol needs only O(1) communication rounds. It tolerates up to (n-1)/2 of n dishonest servers in the semi-honest environment. Many protocols that use PRPs (e.g., a CBC block cipher mode) can now be translated into the distributed setting. Our main technique for constructing invertible threshold PRPs is a distributed Luby-Rackoff construction where both the secret keys *and* the input are shared among the servers. We also present protocols for obliviously computing pseudo-random functions by Naor-Reingold and Dodis-Yampolskiy with shared input and keys.

In CRYPTO 2005, Xiaoyun Wang, Hongbo Yu and Yiqun Lisa Yin proposed an efficient collision attack on SHA-0. Collision messages are found with complexity $2^{39}$ SHA-0 operations by using their method. Collision messages can be obtained when a message satisfying all sufficient conditions is found. In their paper, they proposed message modifications that can satisfy all sufficient conditions of step 1-20. However, they didn't propose message modifications for sufficient conditions after step 21. In this paper, we propose message modifications for sufficient conditions of step 21-23. By using our message modifications, collision messages are found with complexity $2^{36}$ SHA-0 operations.

Security and privacy in RFID systems is an important and active research area. A number of challenges arise due to the extremely limited computational, storage and communication abilities of a typical RFID tag. This paper describes a step-by-step construction of a family of simple protocols for inexpensive untraceable identification and authentication of RFID tags. This work is aimed primarily at RFID tags that are capable of performing a small number of inexpensive conventional (as opposed to public key) cryptographic operations. It also represents the first result geared for so-called {\em batch mode} of RFID scanning whereby the identification (and/or authentication) of tags is delayed. Proposed protocols involve minimal interaction between a tag and a reader and place very low computational burden on the tag. Notably, they also impose low computational load on back-end servers.

This paper provides one more step towards bridging the gap between the formal and computational approaches to cryptographic protocols. We extend the well-known Abadi-Rogaway logic with probabilistic hashes and we give precise semantic to it using Canetti's oracle hashing. Finally, we show that this interpretation is computationally sound.

In 2005, Wen et al. proposed the first provably secure three-party password-based authenticated key exchange using Weil pairings, and provided their proof in a modified Bellare-Rogaway model (BR-model). Here, we show an impersonation attack on Wen et al.¡¦s scheme and point out a main flaw of their model that allows a man-in-the-middle adversary easily violate the security.

We present a certificate-based encryption scheme which is fully secure in the standard model. Our scheme is based on the identity-based encryption scheme of Waters \cite{W05}. Although some generic constructions from IBE to CBE has been previously proposed, they use the Random Oracle heuristic or provide less practical schemes than ours. Finally, we point out that one of the existing generic constructions going from IBE to CBE is flawed.

Formal verification is getting more and more important in computer science. However the state of the art formal verification methods in cryptography are very rudimentary. This paper is one step to provide a tool box allowing the use of formal methods in every aspect of cryptography. In this paper we give a formal specification of the RSA probabilistic signature scheme (RSA-PSS) [4] which is used as algorithm for digital signatures in the PKCS #1 v2.1 standard [7]. Additionally we show the correctness of RSA-PSS. This includes the correctness of RSA, the formal treatment of SHA-1 and the correctness of the PSS encoding method. Moreover we present a proof of concept for the feasibility of verification techniques to a standard signature algorithm.

Jansen introduced a technique for building LFSRs that can be clocked a large number of times with a single simple operation. These may be useful in the construction of stream ciphers based on clock-controlled LFSRs. However, for LFSR sizes of typical interest, it appears generally hard to find such jumping LFSRs with particular desired parameters. In this note we explain a trick which we used to find the jumping LFSRs in MICKEY and MICKEY-128, and which may be useful for future applications.

We report on a man-in-the-middle attack on PKINIT, the public key extension of the widely deployed Kerberos 5 authentication protocol. This flaw allows an attacker to impersonate Kerberos administrative principals (KDC) and end-servers to a client, hence breaching the authentication guarantees of Kerberos. It also gives the attacker the keys that the KDC would normally generate to encrypt the service requests of this client, hence defeating confidentiality as well. The discovery of this attack caused the IETF to change the specification of PKINIT and Microsoft to release a security update for some Windows operating systems. We discovered this attack as part of an ongoing formal analysis of the Kerberos protocol suite, and we have formally verified several fixes to PKINIT that prevent our attack.

We present a simple algorithm for computing the arithmetic weight of an integer with respect to a given radix r>=2. The arithmetic weight of n is the minimum number of nonzero digits in any signed radix-r representation of n. This algorithm leads to a new family of minimal weight signed radix-r representations which can be constructed using a left-to-right on-line algorithm. These representations are different from the ones previously reported by Joye and Yen at PKC 2002. The idea behind our algorithm is that of choosing closest elements which was introduced by Muir and Stinson at CT-RSA 2005. Our results have applications in coding theory and in the efficient implementation of public-key cryptography.

A nominative signature scheme allows a nominator (or signer) and a nominee (or verifier) to jointly generate and publish a signature in such a way that \emph{only} the nominee can verify the signature and if necessary, \emph{only} the nominee can prove to a third party that the signature is valid. In a recent work, Huang and Wang proposed a new nominative signature scheme which, in addition to the above properties, \emph{only} allows the nominee to convert a nominative signature to a publicly verifiable one. In ACISP 2005, Susilo and Mu presented several algorithms and claimed that these algorithms can be used by the nominator to verify the validity of a published nominative signature, show to a third party that the signature is valid, and also convert the signature to a publicly verifiable one, all \emph{without} any help from the nominee. In this paper, we point out that Susilo and Mu's attacks are actually \emph{incomplete} and {\it inaccurate}. In particular, we show that there exists no efficient algorithm for a nominator to check the validity of a signature if this signature is generated by the nominator and the nominee {\it honestly} and the Decisional Diffie-Hellman Problem is hard. On the other hand, we point out that the Huang-Wang scheme is indeed {\it insecure}, since there is an attack that allows the nominator to generate valid nominative signatures alone and prove the validity of such signatures to a third party.

Over the last 30 years the study of group key agreement has stimulated much work. And as a result of the increased popularity of ad hoc networks, some approaches for the group key establishment in such networks are proposed. However, they are either only for static group or the memory, computation and communication costs are unacceptable for ad-hoc networks. In this thesis some protocol suites from the literature (2^d-cube, 2^d-octopus, Asokan-Ginzboorg, CLIQUES, STR and TGDH) shall be discussed. We have optimized STR and TGDH by reducing the memory, communication and computation costs. The optimized version are denoted by µSTR and µTGDH respectively. Based on the protocol suites µSTR and µTGDH we present a Tree-based group key agreement Framework for Ad-hoc Networks (TFAN). TFAN is especially suitable for ad-hoc networks with limited bandwidth and devices with limited memory and computation capability. To simulate the protocols, we have implemented TFAN, µSTR and µTGDH with J2ME CDC. The TFAN API will be described in this thesis.

In this paper we describe how to efficiently implement pairing calculation on supersingular genus~2 curves over prime fields. We find that pairing calculation on supersingular genus~2 curves over prime fields is efficient and a viable candidate for practical implementation. We also show how to eliminate divisions in an efficient manner when computing the Tate pairing, and how this algorithm is useful for curves of genus greater than one.

Many cryptographic protocols secure against malicious players use specially designed cryptographic tools. Essentially, these special tools function much like less-expensive tools, but give extra `powers' to a reduction or simulation algorithm. Using these powers, cryptographers can construct a proof of security using standard techniques. However, these powers are not available to either the honest parties or the adversary. In a large class of protocols, by replacing the expensive, specially designed cryptographic tool with a corresponding less-expensive tool, we can improve the protocol's efficiency without changing the functionality available to either the adversary or the honest parties. The key motivating question we address in this paper is whether the new, `substituted' protocol is still secure. We introduce a framework for reasoning about this question. Our framework uses translators: special purpose oracles that map outputs of one cryptographic tool to corresponding outputs of a different tool. Translators are similar to, but generally weaker than, the ``angels'' of Prabhakaran and Sahai. We introduce the notion of substitution-friendly protocols and show that such protocols remain secure after substitution in our framework. We also leverage existing proofs of security; there is no need to re-prove security from scratch. We demonstrate our framework with a non-interactive non-malleable bit commitment protocol.

Worldwide symmetric encryption standards such as DES (Data Encryption Standard), AES (Advanced Encryption Standard), and EES (Escrowed Encryption Standard), have been -- and some of them still are -- extensively used to solve the problem of communication over an insecure channel, but with today's advanced technologies, they seem to not be as secure as one would like. In this paper, we propose efficient alternatives based on special classes of globally invertible cascaded convolutional transducers. The proposed symmetric encryption techniques have at least four advantages over traditional schemes based on Feistel ciphers. First, the secret key of a cascaded convolutional cryptosystem is usually much more easier to generate. Second, the encryption and decryption procedures are much simpler, and consequentially, much faster. Third, the desired security level can be obtained by just setting appropriate values for the parameters of the convolutional cryptosystem. Finally, they are much more parallelizable than symmetric encryption standards based on Feistel ciphers.

A linear $(q^d,q,t)$-perfect hash family of size $s$ in a vector space $V$ of order $q^d$ over a field $F$ of order $q$ consists of a sequence $\phi_1,\ldots,\phi_s$ of linear functions from $V$ to $F$ with the following property: for all $t$ subsets $X\subseteq V$ there exists $i\in\{1,\ldots,s\}$ such that $\phi_i$ is injective when restricted to $F$. A linear $(q^d,q,t)$-perfect hash family of minimal size $d(t-1)$ is said to be optimal. In this paper we use projective geometry techniques to completely determine the values of $q$ for which optimal linear $(q^3,q,3)$-perfect hash families exist and give constructions in these cases. We also give constructions of optimal linear $(q^2,q,5)$-perfect hash families.

In this thesis we consider homomorphic cryptosystems and their applications. Homomorphic cryptosystems allow for computations on encrypted data. We prove that the search for an algebraically homomorphic scheme can be reduced to the search of a homomorphic scheme on a special non-abelian group. Furthermore, we focus on a special application: computing with encrypted functions and data, respectively. For this application we develop an improved protocol that is efficient for functions that are computable by polynomial branching programs. Finally, we generalise the elliptic curve Paillier scheme by S. Galbraith in order to construct a threshold version of it. For this threshold scheme we develop several Sigma-protocols. Using these protocols we apply our threshold scheme on multiparty computations, electronic voting and commitment schemes.

We extend the lower bound, obtained by M. Lobanov, on the first order nonlinearity of functions with given algebraic immunity, into a bound on the higher order nonlinearities.

In addition to its usual complexity assumptions, cryptography silently assumes that information can be physically protected in a single location. As we now know, real-life devices are not ideal and confidential information leaks through different physical channels.\smallskip Whilst most aspects of side channel leakage (cryptophthora) are now well understood, no attacks on totally unknown algorithms are known to date. This paper describes such an attack.\smallskip By {\sl totally unknown} we mean that no information on the algorithm's mathematical description (including the plaintext size), the microprocessor or the chip's power consumption model is available to the attacker.\smallskip We successfully experimented the attack on a commercially available device produced by a non-European smart-card manufacturer.

We extend a Probabilistic Hoare-style logic to formalize game-based cryptographic proofs. Our approach provides a systematic and rigorous framework, thus preventing errors from being introduced. We illustrate our technique by proving semantic security of ElGamal.

In 1999, Yang and shieh proposed two password authentication schemes using smart cards. But in 2003, Sun and Yeh indicated that their schemes are subject to the forgery attack. So in 2005, Yang and Wang proposed an improvement of Yang and Shieh¡¦s schemes to resist against Sun and Yeh¡¦s attack. However in this paper, we will point out that Yang and Wang¡¦s schemes still suffer from the forgery attack. Because in their schemes, one can masquerade as a legal user and cheat the remote server successfully in the authentication phase.

A linear $(q^d,q,t)$-perfect hash family of size $s$ in a vector space $V$ of order $q^d$ over a field $F$ of order $q$ consists of a set $\phi_1,\ldots,\phi_s$ of linear functionals from $V$ to $F$ with the following property: for all $t$ subsets $X\subseteq V$ there exists $i\in\{1,\ldots,s\}$ such that $\phi_i$ is injective when restricted to $F$. A linear $(q^d,q,t)$-perfect hash family of minimal size $d(t-1)$ is said to be {\em optimal}. In this paper we extend the theory for linear perfect hash families based on sequences developed by Blackburn and Wild. We develop techniques which we use to construct new optimal linear $(q^2,q,5)$-perfect hash families and $(q^4,q,3)$-perfect hash families. The sequence approach also explains a relationship between linear $(q^3,q,3)$-perfect hash families and linear $(q^2,q,4)$-perfect hash families.

Multivariate Quadratic public key schemes have been suggested back in 1985 by Matsumoto and Imai as an alternative for the RSA scheme. Since then, several other schemes have been proposed, for example Hidden Field Equations, Unbalanced Oil and Vinegar schemes, and Stepwise Triangular Schemes. All these schemes have a rather large key space for a secure choice of parameters. Surprisingly, the question of equivalent keys has not been discussed in the open literature until recently. In this article, we show that for all basic classes mentioned above, it is possible to reduce the private --- and hence the public --- key space by several orders of magnitude. For the Matsumoto-Imai scheme, we are even able to show that the reductions we found are the only ones possible, i.e., that these reductions are tight. While the theorems developed in this article are of independent interest themselves as they broaden our understanding of Multivariate Quadratic public key systems, we see applications of our results both in cryptanalysis and in memory efficient implementations of MQ-schemes.

We construct three new signatures and prove their securities without random oracles. They are motivated, respectively, by Boneh and Boyen's, Zhang, et al.'s, and Camenisch and Lysyanskaya's signatures without random oracles. The first two of our signatures are as short as Boneh and Boyen's (resp. Zhang, et al.'s} state-of-the-art short signatures. Our third signature is reducible to a modified LRSW Assumption but without their hypothesized external signing oracle. New and interesting variants of the q-SDH Assumption, the q-SR (Square Root) Assumption are also presented. New and independently interesting proof techniques extending the two-mode technique of Boneh and Boyen are used, including a combined three-mode simulation and rewinding in the standard model.

The publication of the quadratic Frobenius primality test by Grantham, 1998 has stimulated a lot of researchin this area. In this test as well as in the Miller-Rabin test a composite number may be declared as probably prime. Repeating several tests decreases that error probability. While most research papers in this subject focus on minimising the error probability as a function of the number of tests (or, more generally, of the computational effort) asymptotically, we present a simplified variant SQFT of the quadratic Frobenius test. This test is so simple that it can easily be implemented on a smart card. During prime number generation, a large number of composite numbers must be tested before a (probable) prime is found. Therefore we need a fast test, such as the Miller-Rabin test with a small basis, to rule out most prime candidates quickly before a promising candidate will be tested with a more sophisticated variant of the QFT. Our test SQFT makes optimum use of the information gathered by a previous Miller-Rabin test. It has run time equivalent to two Miller-Rabin tests; and it achieves a worst-case error probability of $2^{-12t}$ with $t$ tests. Most cryptographic standards require an average-case error probability of at most $2^{-80}$ or $2^{-100}$, when prime numbers are generated in public key systems. Our test SQFT achieves an average-case error probability of $2^{-134}$ with two test rounds for $500-$bit primes. We also present a more sophisticated version SQFT3 of our test that has run time and worst-case error probability comparable to the test EQFTwc by Damg\aa rd and Frandsen, 2003, in all cases. Our test SQFT3 avoids the computation of cubic residuosity symbols, as required in the test EQFTwc.

At Crypto 2005, Juels and Weis (building on work of Hopper and Blum) proposed and analyzed two shared-key authentication protocols --- HB and HB+ --- whose extremely low computational cost makes them attractive for low-cost devices such as radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags. Security of these protocols is based on the conjectured hardness of the ``learning parity with noise'' (LPN) problem: the HB protocol is proven secure against a passive (eavesdropping) adversary, while the HB+ protocol is proven secure against active attacks. Juels and Weis prove security of these protocols only for the case of sequential executions, and explicitly leave open the question of whether security holds also in the case of parallel or concurrent executions. In addition to guaranteeing security against a stronger class of adversaries, a positive answer to this question would allow the HB+ protocol to be parallelized, thereby reducing its round complexity from super-logarithmic (in the security parameter) to 3. Using a recent result by Regev (STOC 2005) regarding the LPN problem, we answer the aforementioned question in the affirmative and prove security of the HB and HB+ protocols under parallel/concurrent executions. Applying Regev's result also yields what we find to be substantially simpler security proofs for these protocols which are also more complete in that they explicitly address the dependence of the soundness error on the number of iterations.

We present a modification of the well-known hidden number problem (HNP) which we refer to as a one-time HNP (OT-HNP). We also present an algorithm for solving such a problem together with its formal analysis. We show then that carefully designed instances of OT-HNP can be used to break certain flawed implementations of public key schemes efficiently. We work, for instance, with Nguyen’s attack on El Gamal’s signature scheme in the GNU Privacy Guard of version 1.2.3. The technique employed there was not based on HNP, since it was supposed that more than one signature would be necessary, which seemed to be a wastage. We will see, however, that by using OT-HNP one signature is still far enough, while retaining certain elegance of the HNP approach. We also present an experimental confirmation of this result.

Using a simple heuristic approach to the root problem in braid groups, we show that cryptographic parameters proposed in this context must be considered as insecure. In our experiments we can, often within seconds, extract the secret key of an authentication system based on the root problem in braid groups.

Seifert recently described a new fault attack against an implementation of RSA signature verification. Here we give a simplified analysis of Seifert's attack and gauge its practicality against RSA moduli of practical sizes. We suggest an improvement to Seifert's attack which has the following consequences: if an adversary is able to cause random faults in only 4 bits of a 1024-bit RSA modulus stored in a device, then there is a greater than 50% chance that they will be able to make that device accept a signature on a message of their choice. For 2048-bit RSA, 6 bits suffice.

In this article we show that Shim¡¦s new ID-based tripartite multiple-key agreement protocol still suffers from the impersonation attack, a malicious user can launch an impersonation attack on their protocol.

The paper proposes a new scheme of authenticated encryption that is either publicly verifiable or not publicly verifiable depending on the quantity of information the recipient released. This property would give recipient much flexibility in many applications. This scheme combines the ElGamal encryption with Schnorr signature. Considering the security goal of signature, the resultant scheme is at least as secure as that of the combined signature scheme. The security goal of encryption is examined under the chosen ciphertext attack, it is proven directly related to the security of signature. Furthermore, this new scheme is also secure against one-more-decryption attack. This novel security goal may be valuable in the applications of private information retrieval.

In 2001, Canetti and Krawczyk proposed a security model (CK-model) for authentication protocols. They also gave an indistinguishability-based definition for key exchange protocols. Since then the model has almost exclusively been used for analyzing key exchange protocols, although it can be applied to authentication protocols in general. The model not only captures a large class of attacks but also provides a modular approach to the design of authentication protocols. However, the model does not capture the property of Key Compromise Impersonation (KCI) Resilience. Until now, analysis concerning this property has mostly been done heuristically and restricted to key exchange protocols only. Previous attempts on formalizing KCI have mostly been done in some ad hoc manner and additional proofs have to be given, specifically for the security of KCI resilience. In this paper, we propose an extension to the CK-model, which allows, for the first time, the KCI attacks to be considered in authentication protocols in general, rather than restricted to key exchange protocols, and no more additional proofs are required specifically for KCI security. With the revival of interest in identity-based (ID-based) cryptography, there have been many new ID-based key exchange protocols proposed. Despite the fact that some of them have been proven in some restricted versions of a model proposed by Bellare and Rogaway in 1993 and some others have been proven in the original CK-model, there is no rigorous model specifically for ID-based key exchange security. In particular, forward secrecy against compromised Key Generation Server (KGS-FS) has never been captured even though this notion is more important and stronger than the perfect forward secrecy in ID-based key exchange. For this, we further extend our model to ID-based setting and capture the property of KGS-FS for ID-based key exchange security.

In elliptic curve cryptosystems, scalar multiplications performed on the curves have much effect on the efficiency of the schemes, and many efficient methods have been proposed. In particular, recoding methods of the scalars play an important role in the performance of the algorithm used. For integer radices, non-adjacent form (NAF) and its generalizations (e.g., generalized non-adjacent form (GNAF) and radix-$r$ non-adjacent form ($r$NAF) \cite{CL73,TYW04}) are proposed for minimizing the non-zero densities in the representations of the scalars. On the other hand, for subfield elliptic curves, Frobenius-adic expansions of the scalars can be used for improving efficiency (\cite{Sma99+}). Unfortunately, there are only a few methods apply the techniques of NAF or its analogue to Frobenius-adic expansion, namely $\tau$-adic NAF techniques (\cite{Kob98,Sol00,BMX04} and \cite{GLS01}) for Koblitz curves and hyperelliptic Koblitz curves. In this paper, we try to combine these techniques, namely recoding methods for reducing non-zero density and Frobenius-adic expansion, and propose two new efficient recoding methods of scalars for more general family of subfield elliptic curves over odd characteristics. We also prove that the non-zero densities for the new methods are same as those for original GNAF and $r$NAF. As a result, the speed of the proposed schemes improve between 12.5{\%} and 79{\%} over that for previously known schemes.

Almost resilient function is the generalization of resilient function and have important applications in multiple authenticate codes and almost security cryptographic Boolean functions.In this paper,some secondary constructions are provided.In particular, the theorem $3$ in {\cite {ke}} is improved. As $\varepsilon $-almost$(n,1,k)$-CI functions plays an important role in the secondary constructions, we concluded some properties and constructions. Specially we presented a spectrum characterization of balanced almost CI function, which can be used to identify a balanced almost CI function by computing its walsh spectra.

The Probabilistic I/O Automata framework of Lynch, Segala and Vaandrager provides tools for precisely specifying protocols and reasoning about their correctness using multiple levels of abstraction, based on implementation relationships between these levels. We enhance this framework to allow analyzing protocols that use cryptographic primitives. This requires resolving and reconciling issues such as nondeterministic behavior and scheduling, randomness, resource-bounded computation, and computational hardness assumptions. The enhanced framework allows for more rigorous and systematic analysis of cryptographic protocols. To demonstrate the use of this framework, we present an example analysis that we have done for an Oblivious Transfer protocol.

In 2003, Boyd and Mao proposed two deniable authenticated key establishment protocols using elliptic curve pairings for Internet protocols, one is based on Diffie-Hellman key exchange and the other is based on Public-Key Encryption approach. For the use of elliptic curve pairings, they declared that their schemes could be more efficient than the existing Internet Key Exchange (IKE), nowadays. However in this paper, we will show that both of Boyd-Mao¡¦s protocols suffer from the key-Compromise Impersonation attack.

In 2005, Manik et al. propose a novel remote user authentication scheme using bilinear pairings which allows a valid user to login to the remote system but prohibits too many users to login with the same login-ID. It also provides a flexible password change function. In this paper, we will show that this remote user authentication scheme is not secure, an adversary can always pass the authentication.

This paper gives a construction method which can get a large class of Boolean functions with maximum algebraic immunity(AI) from one such giving function. Our constructions get more functions than any previous construction. The cryptographic properties, such as balance, algebraic degree etc, of those functions are studied. It shows that we can construct Boolean functions with better cryptographic properties, which gives the guidance for the design of Boolean functions to resist algebraic attack, and helps to design good cryptographic primitives of cryptosystems. From these constructions, we show that the count of the Boolean functions with maximum AI is bigger than ${2^{2^{n-1}}}$ for $n$ odd, bigger than ${2^{2^{n-1}+\frac{1}{2}\binom{n}{\frac{n}{2}} }}$ for $n$ even, which confirms the computer simulation result that such boolean functions are numerous. As far as we know, this is the first bound about this count.

Stream ciphers play an important role in symmetric cryptology because of their suitability in high speed applications where block ciphers fall short. A large number of fast stream ciphers or pseudorandom bit generators (PRBG's) can be found in the literature that are based on arrays and simple operations such as modular additions, rotations and memory accesses (e.g. RC4, RC4A, Py, Py6, ISAAC etc.). This paper investigates the security of array-based stream ciphers (or PRBG's) against certain types of distinguishing attacks in a unified way. We argue, counter-intuitively, that the most useful characteristic of an array, namely, the association of array-elements with unique indices, may turn out to be the origins of distinguishing attacks if adequate caution is not maintained. In short, an adversary may attack a cipher simply exploiting the dependence of array-elements on the corresponding indices. Most importantly, the weaknesses are not eliminated even if the indices and the array-elements are made to follow uniform distributions separately. Exploiting these weaknesses we build distinguishing attacks with reasonable advantage on five recent stream ciphers (or PRBG's), namely, Py6 (2005, Biham \emph{et al.}), IA, ISAAC (1996, Jenkins Jr.), NGG, GGHN (2005, Gong \emph{et al.}) with data complexities $2^{68.61}$, $2^{32.89}$, $2^{16.89}$, $2^{32.89}$ and $2^{32.89}$ respectively. In all the cases we worked under the assumption that the key-setup algorithms of the ciphers produced uniformly distributed internal states. We only investigated the mixing of bits in the keystream generation algorithms. In hindsight, we also observe that the previous attacks on the other array-based stream ciphers (e.g. Py, etc.), can also be explained in the general framework developed in this paper. We hope that our analyses will be useful in the evaluation of the security of stream ciphers based on arrays and modular addition.

In this paper we present a new key establishment protocol based on the decomposition problem in non-commutative groups which is: given two elements w, w_1 of the platform group G and two subgroups A, B of G (not necessarily distinct), find elements a in A, b in B such that w_1 = a w b. Here we introduce two new ideas that improve the security of key establishment protocols based on the decomposition problem. In particular, we conceal (i.e., do not publish explicitly) one of the subgroups A, B, thus introducing an additional computationally hard problem for the adversary, namely, finding the centralizer of a given finitely generated subgroup.

In the presence of economic globalization joint venture is one of the most common and effective means of conducting business internationally. By building joint ventures companies form strategic alliances that help them to enter new economic markets and further their business goals in a cooperative effort without loosing own independence. Upon building a joint venture company, two or more "parent" companies agree to share capital, technology, human ressources, risks and rewards in a formation of a new entity under shared control by a "board of directors", which consists of representatives of "parent" companies. The establishment of such shared control is tricky and relies generally on the "trust, but verify" relationship, i.e., companies trust the information they receive from prospective partners, but it is a good business practice to verify the facts. In this paper we focus on the issue of the shared financial control in a joint venture. We consider the mostly preferred form of the control where every member of the board is able to issue payment orders on behalf of the joint venture, but at the same time representatives of other companies, should be able to monitor the accounting to achieve fairness in the spending of shared funds. For this form of the shared control we propose a new secure group-oriented signature scheme, called a {\it democratic group signature} scheme, which results from the modification of the standard notion of group signatures by eliminating the role of the group manager. We also show that existing schemes, e.g., ring and group signatures, cannot be used to realize the required shared control based on the "trust, but verify" relationship.

The Trusted Computing Platform is the industrial initiative to implement computer security. However, privacy protection is a critical problem that must be solved in Trusted Computing Platform. In this paper, we propose a simple and efficient method to implement anonymous authentication in such setting. The new scheme is proved to be secure under the strong RSA assumption and decisional Diffie-Hellman assumption.

Visualizing protocols is not only useful as a step towards understanding and ensuring security properties, but is also a beneficial tool to communicate notions of security to decision makers and technical people outside the field of cryptography. We present a simple card game that is a visualization for a secure protocol for private polling where it is simple to see that individual responses cannot be traced back to a respondent, and cheating is irrational. We use visualization tricks to illustrate a somewhat complex protocol, namely the Cryptographic Randomized Response Technique protocol of Lipmaa et al. While our tools --- commitments and cut-and-choose --- are well known, our construction for oblivious transfer using playing cards is new. As part of visualizing the protocol, we have been able to show that, while cut-and-choose protocols normally get more secure with an increasing number of choices, the protocol we consider --- surprisingly --- does not. This is true for our visualization of the protocol and for the real protocol.

Preneel, Govaerts, and Vandewalle[12] considered the 64 most basic ways to construct a hash function from a block cipher, and regarded 12 of these 64 schemes as secure. Black, Pogaway and Shrimpton[3] proved that, in black-box model, the 12 schemes that PGV singled out as secure really are secure and given tight upper and lower bounds on their collision resistance. And also they pointed out, by stepping outside of the Merkle-Damgard[5] approach to analysis, an additional 8 of the 64 schemes are just as collision resistant as the first group of schemes. In this paper we point out that the 12 compression functions that PGV singled out are free start collision resistant and others are not, the additional 8 compression functions are only fix start collision resistant as singled out by BRS, the hash functions based on those 20 schemes are fix start collision resistant, the upper bound of collision resistance and preimage resistant are given based on conditional probability of compression function, not based on assumption of random oracle model, the bounds have more practical value than the bounds given by BRS. In view point of collision resistant, the best 4 schemes are not among the 12 schemes singled by PGV, and among the 8 schemes point out by BRS, and block cipher E itself is the best compression to build a collision resistant hash function. At the end of the paper, two recommend structure of block cipher based hash function are given, and a prove of their securities are also given.

One-time signatures have been known for more than two decades, and have been studied mainly due to their theoretical value. Recent works motivated us to examine the practical use of one-time signatures in high-performance applications. In this paper we describe FMTseq - a signature scheme that merges recent improvements in hash tree traversal into Merkle's one-time signature scheme. Implementation results show that the scheme provides a signature speed of up to 35 times faster than a 2048-bit RSA signature scheme, for about one million signatures, and a signature size of only a few kilobytes. We provide an analysis of practical parameter selection for the scheme, and improvements that can be applied in more specific scenarios.

We obtain tight bound between nonlinearity and algebraic immunity of a Boolean function and construct balanced functions that achive this bound for all possible values of parameters.

At Crypto'05, Juels and Weis introduce HB+, an enhancement of the Hopper and Blum (HB) authentication protocol. This protocol HB+ is proven secure against active attacks, though preserving HB's advantages: mainly, requiring so few resources to run that it can be implemented on an RFID tag. However, in a wider adversarial model, Gilbert, Robshaw and Sibert exhibit a very effective attack against HB+. We here show how a modification of the HB+ protocol thwarts Gilbert et al's attack. The resulting protocol, HB++, remains a good candidate for RFID tags authentication.

We show that an adversary can over-spend a coin n(n+1)! times without being detected and identified in the n-spendable extension of Ferguson's single-term off-line coin, simply by permuting the witness messages in the three-move zero-knowledge proof payment protocol. We repair the detection scheme by adding a simple verification rule in the payment protocol. We repair the identification scheme by restricting the identity format.

Mercurial commitments were introduced by Chase et al. (Eurocrypt 2005) and form a key building block for constructing zero-knowledge sets (introduced by Micali, Rabin and Kilian (FOCS'03)}). Unlike regular commitments, which are strictly binding, mercurial commitments allow for certain amount of (limited) freedom. The notion of Chase et al. also required that mercurial commitments should be equivocable given a certain trapdoor, although the notion is interesting even without this condition. While trivially implying regular (trapdoor) commitments, it was not clear from the prior work if the converse was true: Chase et al. gave several constructions of mercurial commitments from various incompatible assumptions, leaving open if they can be built from any (trapdoor) commitment scheme, and, in particular, from any one-way function. We give an affirmative answer to this question, by giving two simple constructions of mercurial commitments from any trapdoor bit commitment scheme. By plugging in various (trapdoor) bit commitment schemes, we get *all* the efficient constructions from Chase et al. and Micali et al., as well as several immediate new constructions. Our results imply that (a) ** mercurial commitments can be viewed as surprisingly simple variations of regular (trapdoor) commitments ** (and, thus, can be built from one-way functions and, more efficiently, from a variety of other assumptions); and (b) ** the existence of zero-knowledge sets is equivalent to the existence of collision-resistant hash functions ** (moreover, the former can be efficiently built from the latter and trapdoor commitments). Of independent interest, we also give a stronger and yet much simpler definition of mercurial commitments than that of Chase et al. (which is also met by our constructions). Overall, we believe that our results eludicate the notion of mercurial commitments, and better explain the rational following the previous constructions of mercurial commitments.

In this paper two important issues in theory of algebraic attacks are addressed. We first provide a theoretical framework for better understanding of design rationale in construction of Boolean functions with maximum algebraic immunity. Based on these results, an iterative design of functions with maximum possible algebraic immunity is proposed. In contrast to known constructions, our method generates balanced functions of maximum degree and high nonlinearity, that is functions satisfying all main cryptographic criteria. Additionally, functions in this class have a low implementation cost due to a small number of terms in the ANF. Secondly, for a given Boolean function, a novel algorithm for deciding the existence of annihilators of small degree is presented. The algorithm utilizes the known methods in a slightly different manner which results in a significantly reduced complexity of computation.

This work is motivated by the observation that the function $\F{m}$ to $\F{m}$ defined by $x^d+(x+1)^d+a$ for some $a\in \F{m}$ can be used to construct difference sets. A desired condition is, that the function $\varphi _d(x):=x^d+(x+1)^d$ is a $2^s$-to-1 mapping. If $s=1$, then the function $x^d$ has to be APN. If $s>1$, then there is up to equivalence only one function known: The function $\varphi _d$ is a $2^s$-to-1 mapping if $d$ is the Gold parameter $d=2^k+1$ with $\gcd (k,m)=s$. We show in this paper, that $\varphi _d$ is also a $2^s$-to-1 mapping if $d$ is the Kasami parameter $d=2^{2k}-2^k+1$ with $\gcd (k,m)=s$ and $m/s$ odd. We hope, that this observation can be used to construct more difference sets.

We present a blind signature scheme that is efficient and provably secure without random oracles under concurrent attacks utilizing only four moves of short communication. The scheme is based on elliptic curve groups for which a bilinear map exists and on extractable and equivocable commitments. The unforgeability of the employed signature scheme is guaranteed by the LRSW assumption while the blindness property of our scheme is guaranteed by the Decisional Linear Diffie-Hellman assumption. We prove our construction secure under the above assumptions as well as Paillier's DCR assumption in the concurrent attack model of Juels, Luby and Ostrovsky from Crypto '97 using a common reference string. Our construction is the first efficient construction for blind signatures in such a concurrent model without random oracles. We present two variants of our basic protocol: first, a blind signature scheme where blindness still holds even if the public-key generation is maliciously controlled; second, a blind signature scheme that incorporates a ``public-tagging'' mechanism. This latter variant of our scheme gives rise to a partially blind signature with essentially the same efficiency and security properties as our basic scheme.

A prompting protocol permits users to securely retrieve secrets with greater entropy than passwords. The retrieved user secrets can have enough entropy to be used to derive cryptographic keys.

In 1998, Blaze, Bleumer, and Strauss (BBS) proposed proxy re-signatures, in which a semi-trusted proxy acts as a translator between Alice and Bob. To translate, the proxy converts a signature from Alice into a signature from Bob on the same message. The proxy, however, does not learn any signing key and cannot sign arbitrary messages on behalf of either Alice or Bob. Since the BBS proposal, the proxy re-signature primitive has been largely ignored, but we show that it is a very useful tool for sharing web certificates, forming weak group signatures, and authenticating a network path. We begin our results by formalizing the definition of security for a proxy re-signature. We next substantiate the need for improved schemes by pointing out certain weaknesses of the original BBS proxy re-signature scheme which make it unfit for most practical applications. We then present two secure proxy re-signature schemes based on bilinear maps. Our first scheme relies on the Computational Diffie-Hellman (CDH) assumption; here the proxy can translate from Alice to Bob and vice-versa. Our second scheme relies on the CDH and 2-Discrete Logarithm (2-DL) assumptions and achieves a stronger security guarantee -- the proxy is only able to translate in one direction. Constructing such a scheme has been an open problem since proposed by BBS in 1998. Furthermore in this second scheme, even if the delegator and the proxy collude, they cannot sign on behalf of the delegatee. Both schemes are efficient and secure in the random oracle model.

In this report the block cipher Kaweichel is examined with regard to linear and differential cryptanalysis. As a result of this investigation new versions with a reduced number of rounds are proposed.

Recently, Al-Riyami and Paterson proposed a generic conversion from CL-PKE (Certificateless Public Key Encryption) to CBE (Certificate Based Encryption) and claimed that the derived CBE scheme is secure and even more efficient than the original scheme of Gentry. In this paper, we show that their conversion is wrong due to the flaw of the security proof. It leads the new concrete CBE scheme by Al-Riyami and Paterson to be invalidated. In addition, our result supports the impossibility to relate both notions in any directions.

The Feistel structure is well-known as a good structure for building block ciphers, due to its property of invertibility. It can be made non-invertible by fixing the left half of the input to 0, and by discarding the left half of the output bits. It then becomes suitable as a hash function construction. This paper uses the structure to build a hash function called F-Hash, which is immune to recent attack styles. In this paper, a more precise evaluation method, based upon conditional probability, is given.

We present a new signature whose security is reducible to a new assumptions about subgroups, the {\em Computational Conjugate Subgroup Members (CCSM) Assumption}, in the random oracle model.

Secure pairing of electronic devices that lack any previous association is a challenging problem which has been considered in many contexts and in various flavors. In this paper, we investigate an alternative and complementary approach--the use of the audio channel for human-assisted authentication of previously un-associated devices. We develop and evaluate a system we call Loud-and-Clear (L&C) which places very little demand on the human user. L&C involves the use of a text-to-speech (TTS) engine for vocalizing a robust-sounding and syntactically-correct (English-like) sentence derived from the hash of a device's public key. By coupling vocalization on one device with the display of the same information on another device, we demonstrate that L&C is suitable for secure device pairing (e.g., key exchange) and similar tasks. We also describe several common use cases, provide some performance data for our prototype implementation and discuss the security properties of L&C.

In this paper, we suggest solutions to the key exposure problem in ring signature. In particular, we propose the first forward secure ring signature scheme and the first key-insulated ring signature schemes. Both constructions allow a $(t,n)$-threshold setting. That is, even $t$ secret keys are compromised, the validity of all forward secure ring signatures generated in the past is still preserved. In the other way, the compromise of up to all secret keys does not allow any adversary to generate a valid key-insulated ring signature for the remaining time periods.

Certificateless public-key cryptosystem is a recently proposed attractive paradigm using public key cryptosystem, which avoids the key escrow inherent in identity-based public-key cryptosystems, and does not need certificates to generate trust in public keys. In 2005, Al-Riyami and Paterson proposed a new certificateless public-key encryption scheme and proved its security in the random oracle model. This paper shows that their scheme is vulnerable to adaptive chosen ciphertext attacks, and presents a countermeasure to overcome such a security flaw.

In this paper, we present a fast attack algorithm to find two-block collision of hash function MD5. The algorithm is based on the two-block collision differential path of MD5 that was presented by Wang et al. in EUROCRYPT 2005[6]. We found that the derived conditions for the desired differential path in [6] were not sufficient to guarantee the differential path to hold and that some conditions could be relaxed to enlarge the collision set. By using technique of small range searching and omitting the computing steps to check the characteristics in algorithm, we can speed up the attack of MD5 efficiently. Compared with the Advanced Message Modification technique [5,6], the small range searching technique can correct 4 more conditions for the first iteration differential and 3 more conditions for the second iteration differential, thus improving the probability and the complexity to find collisions. The whole attack on the MD5 can be accomplished within 5 hours using a PC with Pen-tium4 1.70GHZ CPU.

Solutions for an easy and secure setup of a wireless connection between two devices are urgently needed for WLAN, Wireless USB, Bluetooth and similar standards for short range wireless communication. In this paper we analyse the SAS protocol by Vaudenay and propose a new three round protocol MA-3 for mutual data authentication based on a cryptographic commitment scheme and short manually authenticated out-of-band messages. We show that non-malleability of the commitment scheme is essential for the security of the SAS and the MA-3 schemes and that extractability or equivocability do not imply non-malleability. We also give new proofs of security for the SAS and MA-3 protocols and suggestions how to instantiate the MA-3 protocol in practise.

Identity-based (simply ID-based) cryptosystem was proposed in order to simplify key management procedures of certificate-based public key infrastructures. In 2003 Sakai and Kasahara proposed a new ID-based encryption scheme (SK-IBE). In our paper, it is intended to build a new ID-based signature (IBS) scheme which shares the same system parameters with SK-IBE. SK-IBE and our signature scheme yield a new complete ID-based public key cryptosystem. The proposed signature scheme is provably secure against existential forgery for adaptive chosen message and identity attack in the random oracle model based on a reasonably well-explored hardness assumption. Another contribution of this paper is that we first propose the notion of key-insulated threshold signature and present a generic method for constructing key-insulated threshold signature scheme.

A secure group signature is required to be anonymous, that is, given two group signatures generated by two different members on the same message or two group signatures generated by the same member on two different messages, they are indistinguishable except for the group manager. In this paper we prove the equivalence of a group signature's anonymity and its indistinguishability against chosen ciphertext attacks if we view a group signature as an encryption of member identity. Particularly, we prove ACJT's group signature is IND-CCA2 secure, so ACJT's scheme is anonymous in the strong sense. The result is an answer to an open question in literature.

Key-dependent message security, short KDM security, was introduced by Black, Rogaway and Shrimpton to address the case where key cycles occur among encryptions, e.g., a key is encrypted with itself. It was mainly motivated by key cycles in Dolev-Yao models, i.e., symbolic abstractions of cryptography by term algebras, and a corresponding soundness result was later shown by Adão et al. However, both the KDM definition and this soundness result do not allow the general active attacks typical for Dolev-Yao models and for security protocols in general. We extend these definitions so that we can obtain a soundness result under active attacks. We first present a definition AKDM as a KDM equivalent of authenticated symmetric encryption, i.e., it provides chosen-ciphertext security and integrity of ciphertexts even for key cycles. However, this is not yet sufficient for the desired soundness, and thus we give a definition DKDM that additionally allows limited dynamic revelation of keys. We show that this is sufficient for soundness, even in the strong sense of blackbox reactive simulatability (BRSIM)/UC and including joint terms with other operators. We also present constructions of schemes secure under the new definitions, based on current KDM-secure schemes. Moreover, we explore the relations between the new definitions and existing ones for symmetric encryption in detail, in the sense of implications or separating examples for almost all cases.

On an elliptic curve, the degree of an isogeny corresponds essentially to the degrees of the polynomial expressions involved in its application. The multiplication--by--$\ell$ map $[\ell]$ has degree~$\ell^2$, therefore the complexity to directly evaluate $[\ell](P)$ is $O(\ell^2)$. For a small prime $\ell\, (= 2, 3)$ such that the additive binary representation provides no better performance, this represents the true cost of application of scalar multiplication. If an elliptic curves admits an isogeny $\varphi$ of degree $\ell$ then the costs of computing $\varphi(P)$ should in contrast be $O(\ell)$ field operations. Since we then have a product expression $[\ell] = \hat{\varphi}\varphi$, the existence of an $\ell$-isogeny $\varphi$ on an elliptic curve yields a theoretical improvement from $O(\ell^2)$ to $O(\ell)$ field operations for the evaluation of $[\ell](P)$ by naïve application of the defining polynomials. In this work we investigate actual improvements for small $\ell$ of this asymptotic complexity. For this purpose, we describe the general construction of families of curves with a suitable decomposition $[\ell] = \hat{\varphi}\varphi$, and provide explicit examples of such a family of curves with simple decomposition for~$[3]$. Finally we derive a new tripling algorithm to find complexity improvements to triplication on a curve in certain projective coordinate systems, then combine this new operation to non-adjacent forms for $\ell$-adic expansions in order to obtain an improved strategy for scalar multiplication on elliptic curves.

The successful application to elliptic curve cryptography of side-channel attacks, in which information about the secret key can be recovered from the observation of side channels like power consumption or timing, has motivated the recent development of unified formulæ for elliptic curve point operations. In this paper, we give a version of a previously-developed family of unified point addition formulæ that uses projective coordinates for improved efficiency. We discuss the applicability of a recent attack by Walter on this family of projective formulæ and describe how the field arithmetic can be implemented to obtain fully unified formulæ and avoid this type of attack.

We propose on-line/off-line threshold signature schemes, in which the bulk of signature computation can take place ``off-line" during lulls in service requests. Such precomputation can help systems using threshold signatures quickly respond to requests. For example, tests of the Pond distributed file system showed that computation of a threshold RSA signature consumes roughly 86% of the time required to service writes to small files. Because a large number of writes in file systems are for small files, threshold signatures form a performance bottleneck in Pond and similar systems. We apply the ``hash-sign-switch" paradigm of Shamir and Tauman and the distributed key generation protocol of Gennaro et al. to convert any existing secure threshold digital signature scheme into a threshold on-line/off-line signature scheme. Our construction is fully distributed and requires no trusted dealers. We show that the straightforward attempt at proving security of the resulting construction runs into a subtlety that does not arise for Shamir and Tauman's construction. We resolve the subtlety and prove our signature scheme secure against a static adversary in the partially synchronous communication model under the one-more-discrete-logarithm assumption. The on-line phase of our scheme is efficient: computing a signature takes one round of communication and a few modular multiplications in the common case.

We consider the problem of using untrusted components to build correlation-resistant survivable storage systems that protect file replica locations, while allowing nodes to continuously re-distribute files throughout the network. The principal contribution is a chosen-ciphertext secure, searchable public key encryption scheme which allows for dynamic re-encryption of ciphertexts, and provides for node-targeted searches based on keywords or other identifiers. The scheme is provably secure under the SXDH assumption which holds in certain subgroups of elliptic curves, and a closely related assumption that we introduce.

This paper studies the gaps that exist between cryptography as studied in theory, as defined in standards, as implemented by software engineers, and as actually consumed by users. Our focus is on IPsec, an important and widely-used suite of protocols providing security at the IP layer of network communications. Despite well-known results in theoretical cryptography highlighting the vulnerabilities of unauthenticated encryption, the IPsec standards currently mandate its support. We present evidence that such ``encryption-only'' configurations are in fact still often selected by users in practice, even with strong warnings advising against this in the IPsec standards. We then describe a variety of attacks against such configurations and report on their successful implementation in the case of the Linux kernel implementation of IPsec. Our attacks are realistic in their requirements, highly efficient, and recover the complete contents of IPsec-protected datagrams. Our attacks still apply when integrity protection is provided by a higher layer protocol, and in some cases even when it is supplied by IPsec itself. Finally in this paper, we reflect on the reasons why this unsatisfactory situation persists, and make some recommendations for the future development of IPsec and cryptographic software in general.

A wide-sweeping multi-dimensional analysis and comparison between VEST and the hardware implementations of the AES, AES-HMAC and SHA-2 primitives.

This paper demonstrates operation of the authenticated encryption mode in VEST ciphers. All VEST ciphers operating in the authenticated encryption mode with infinite error propagation provide keyed message authentication at the same speed as their keystream generation, with negligible overhead and maintaining their security ratings.

VEST ciphers are based on bijective non-linear parallel feedback shift registers assisted by non-linear Residue Number System (RNS) based counters. Four VEST cipher family trees are introduced: 80-bit secure VEST-4, 128-bit secure VEST-8, 160-bit secure VEST-16 and 256-bit secure VEST-32. VEST ciphers return 4 to 32 bits of output per clock cycle while occupying ~5K to ~22K ASIC gates including the finite state machine logic overhead. All VEST ciphers support family keying, variable key sizes and instant re-keying. VEST ciphers are designed exploiting all the advantages of ASIC and FPGA hardware offering high-speed encryption with very low latency and substantial performance improvements comparing with general-purpose or software ciphers implemented in the same area.

We construct the first constant-size hierarchical identity-based signature (HIBS) without random oracles - the signature size is $O(\lambda_s)$ bits, where $\lambda_s$ is the security parameter, and it is independent of the number of levels in the hierarchy. We observe that an efficient hierarchical identity-based signcryption (HIBSC) scheme without random oracles can be compositioned from our HIBS and Boneh, Boyen, and Goh's hierarchical identity-based encryption (HIBE). We further optimize it to a constant-factor efficiency improvement. This is the first constant-size HIBSC without random oracles.

In 1982, Chaum \cite{Chaum82} pioneered the anonymous e-cash which finds many applications in e-commerce. In 1993, Brands \cite{Brands93apr,Brands93,Brands93tm} and Ferguson \cite Ferguson93c,Ferguson93} published on single-term offline anonymous e-cash which were the first practical e-cash. Their constructions used blind signatures and were inefficient to implement multi-spendable e-cash. In 1995, Camenisch, Hohenberger, and Lysyanskaya \cite{CaHoLy05} gave the first compact $2^\ell$-spendable e-cash, using zero-knowledge-proof techniques. They left an open problem of the simultaneous attainment of $O(1)$-unit wallet size and efficient coin tracing. The latter property is needed to revoke {\em bad} coins from over-spenders. In this paper, we solve \cite{CaHoLy05}'s open problem, and thus enable the first practical compact e-cash. We use a new technique whose security reduces to a new intractability Assumption: the {\em Decisional Harmonic-Relationed Diffie-Hellman (DHRDH) Assumption}.

In the newest and strongest security models for group signatures \cite{BMW03,BellareShZh05,KiayiasYu04}, attackers are given the capability to query an Open Oracle, $\oo$, in order to obtain the signer identity of the queried signature. This oracle mirrors the Decryption Oracle in security experiments involving encryption schemes, and the security notion of CCA2-full-anonymity for group signatures mirrors the security notion of IND-CCA2-security for encryption schemes. Most group signatures escrows the signer identity to a TTP called the {\em Open Authority (OA)} by encrypting the signer identity to OA. Methods to efficiently instantiate $O(1)$-sized CCA2-fully-anonymous group signatures using IND-CCA2-secure encryptions, such as the Cramer-Shoup scheme or the twin encryption scheme, exist \cite{BMW03,BellareShZh05,KiayiasYu04,NguyenSN04}. However, it has long been suspected that IND-CCA2-secure encryption to OA is an overkill, and that CCA2-fully-anonymous group signature can be constructed using only IND-CPA-secure encryptions. Here, we settle this issue in the positive by constructing CCA2-fully-anonymous group signatures from IND-CPA-secure encryptions for the OA, without ever using IND-CCA2-secure encryptions. Our technique uses a single ElGamal or similar encryption plus Dodis and Yampolskiy \cite{DodisYa05}'s VRF (Verifiable Random Function). The VRF provides a sound signature with zero-knowledge in both the signer secret and the signer identity, while it simultaneously defends active $\oo$-query attacks. The benefits of our theoretical advance is improved efficiency. Instantiations in pairings result in the shortest CCA2-fully-anonymous group signature at 11 rational points or $\approx 1870$ bits for 170-bit curves. It is 27\% shorter (and slightly faster) than the previous fastest \cite{BBS04,KiayiasYu04} at 15 rational points. Instantiations in the strong RSA framework result in the fastest CCA2-fully-anonymous group signature at 4 multi-base exponentiations for 1024-bit RSA. It is 25\% faster than the previous fastest at 5 multi-base exponentiations \cite{ACJT00,CL02,KiayiasYu04}.

We describe a general technique for building authentication systems that resist compromises at the client side. We derive this resistance by storing key information on hardware fast enough for valid use but too slow for an intruder (e.g., a virus) to capture much of the key before being detected and removed. We give formal models for two types of protocols: user authentication and authenticated session-key generation. The first can be used for physical authentication tokens, e.g., used for gaining access to a building. The second can be used for conducting secure remote sessions on laptops that are occasionally infected by viruses. We present and analyze protocols for each of these tasks and describe how they can be implemented. With one example setting of parameters, in the case of user authentication, we are able to guarantee security for 6 months using a device storing 384MB, and in the key generation protocol, a 128GB drive guarantees that an adversary would need 700 days to compromise the key information. The model for intrusion resilience considered in this paper was first introduced by Dagon et al. \cite{DLL05} and motivated by the bounded storage model for cryptography \cite{Mau92}. Recently Dziembowski \cite{Dzi05} independently developed this model, and studied the same problems as the ones addressed in this paper. Our user authentication protocol is essentially the same as that of \cite{Dzi05}, while our authenticated session-key generation protocol builds on that of \cite{Dzi05}.

A secret sharing scheme starts with a secret and then derives from it certain shares (or shadows) which are distributed to users. The secret may be recovered only by certain predetermined groups. In case of compartmented secret sharing, the set of users is partitioned into compartments and the secret can be recovered only if the number of participants from any compartment is greater than a fixed compartment threshold and the total number of participants is greater than a global threshold. In this paper we present a new compartmented secret sharing scheme by extending the Brickell's construction to the case that the global threshold is strictly greater than the sum of the compartment thresholds and we indicate how to use the threshold secret sharing schemes based on the Chinese remainder theorem in order to decrease the size of shares.

Digital signature is one of the most important primitives in public key cryptography. It provides authenticity, integrity and non-repudiation to many kinds of applications. On signer privacy however, it is generally unclear or suspicious of whether a signature scheme itself can guarantee the anonymity of the signer. In this paper, we give some affirmative answers to it. We formally define the signer anonymity for digital signature and propose some schemes of this type. We show that a signer anonymous signature scheme can be very useful by proposing a new anonymous key exchange protocol which allows a client Alice to establish a session key with a server Bob securely while keeping her identity secret from eavesdroppers. In the protocol, the anonymity of Alice is already maintained when Alice sends her signature to Bob in clear, and no additional encapsulation or mechanism is needed for the signature. We also propose a method of using anonymous signature to solve the collusion problem between organizers and reviewers of an anonymous paper review system.

In the context of Universal Composability, we introduce the concept of universal environments and simulators. Then, Universal Composability is equivalent to Universal Composability wrt. universal environments and simulators. We prove the existence of universal environments and simulators and investigate their computational complexity. From this, we get a number of consequences: First, we see that for polynomial-time protocols, exponential adversarial entities are as powerful as unlimited ones. Further, for a large class of protocols (those with bounded communication-complexity) we can show that UC and specialised-simulator UC coincide in the case of statistical security, i.e., that it is does not matter whether the simulator is chosen in dependence of the environment or not. This also implies that for the Universal Composition Theorem for polynomial-time protocols specialised-simulator UC is sufficient. This result is the last piece needed to find all implications and non-implications between the notions of UC, specialised-simulator UC, O(1)-bounded and polynomially-bounded general composability for polynomial-time protocols in the cases of perfect, statistical and polynomial security. Finally, we introduce the notion of bounded-risk UC, which allows to give explicit security guarantees for concrete security parameters and show that in the above case also this variant coincides with UC.

Signcryption schemes aim to provide all of the advantages of simultaneously signing and encrypting a message. Recently, Dent and Bjørstad investigated the possibility of constructing provably secure signcryption schemes using hybrid KEM-DEM techniques. We build on this work by showing that more efficient insider secure hybrid signcryption schemes can be built using Tag-KEMs. To prove the effectiveness of this construction, we will provide several examples of secure signcryption Tag-KEMs, including a brand new construction based on the Chevallier-Mames signature scheme which has the tightest known security reductions for both confidentiality and unforgeability.

After the terror attacks of 9/11, the U.S. Congress passed legislation that requires in the US Visa Waiver Program to begin issuing issuing machine readable passports that are tamper resistant and incorporate biometric and document authentication identifiers. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has issued specifications for Machine Readable Travel Documents (MRTD) that are equipped with a smart card processor to perform biometric identification of the holder. Some countries, such as the United States, will issue machine readable passports that serve only as passports. Other countries, such as the United Kingdom, intend to issue more sophisticated, multi-application passports that can also serve as national identity cards. We have conducted a detailed security analysis of these specificationsm, and we illustrate possible scenarios that could cause a compromise in the security and privacy of holders of such travel documents. Finally, we suggest improved cryptographic protocols and high-assurance smart card operating systems to prevent these compromises and to support electronic visas as well as passports.

At the Crypto 2005 rump session, a new hash function based upon a chaotic map was presented. We display several messages that collide to the same output for this hash function.

We deal with the radix-r representation used for the scalar multiplication of pairing-based cryptosystems with characteristic r. Our goal of this paper is to present some invariant properties about the signed radix-r representation; (1) approximation formulae for the average significant length and the average hamming weight of gNAF and wrNAF representation, (2) some classification formulae of equivalent classes called as Cutting Lemma, Collision Lemma, and Search Space Theorem. We also analyze the security of signed radix-r representations in the sense of side channel attacks, and to this end we propose a secure countermeasure.

We present a new mechanized prover for secrecy properties of cryptographic protocols. In contrast to most previous provers, our tool does not rely on the Dolev-Yao model, but on the computational model. It produces proofs presented as sequences of games; these games are formalized in a probabilistic polynomial-time process calculus. Our tool provides a generic method for specifying security properties of the cryptographic primitives, which can handle shared- and public-key encryption, signatures, message authentication codes, and hash functions. Our tool produces proofs valid for a number of sessions polynomial in the security parameter, in the presence of an active adversary. We have implemented our tool and tested it on a number of examples of protocols from the literature.

In EUROCRYPT2005, a collision attack on MD5 was proposed by Wang et al. In this attack, conditions which are sufficient to generate collisions (called ``sufficient condition") are introduced. This attack raises the success probability by modifing messages to satisfy these conditions. In this attack, 37 conditions cannot be satisfied even messages are modified. Therefore, the complexity is $2^{37}$. After that, Klima improved this result. Since 33 conditions cannot be satisfied in his method, the complexity is $2^{33}$. In this paper, we propose new message modification techniques which are more efficient than attacks proposed so far. In this method, 29 conditions cannot be satisfied. However, this method is probabilistic, and the probability that this method work correctly is roughly 1/2. Therefore, the complexity of this attack is $2^{30}$. Furthermore, we propose a more efficient collision search algorithm than that of Wang et al. By using this algorithm, the total complexity is reduced into roughly 5/8.

The plateaued functions have a big interest for the studying of bent functions and by the reason that many cryptographically important functions are plateaued. In this paper we study the possible values of the affine rank of spectrum support for plateaued functions. We consider for any positive integer $h$ plateaued functions with a spectrum support of cardinality $4^h$ (the cardinality must have such form), give the bounds on the affine rank for such functions and construct functions where the affine rank takes all integer values from $2h$ till $2^{h+1}-2$. We solve completely the problem for $h=2$, namely, we prove that the affine rank of any plateaued function with a spectrum support of cardinality $16$ is $4$, $5$ or $6$.

DHA-256 was presented at the Cryptographic Hash Workshop hosted by NIST in November 2005. DHA-256 (Double Hash Algorithm) was proposed to enhance the security of SHA-256. We present a preliminary analysis of the message expansion and give an alternative 9-step local collision for DHA-256.

One-way hash algorithms are an indispensable tool in data security. Over the last decade or so a number of one-way hash algorithms have been designed and many of them have been used in numerous applications. Recent progress in cryptanalytic attacks on one-way hash algorithms by Wang and co-workers, however, has brought up the urgency of research into new and more secure algorithms. The goal of this paper is two-folded. On one hand we propose a simple technique to affix authentication tags to messages prior to being hashed by an iterative one-way hash algorithm with the aim of increasing the overall security of the algorithm against cryptanalytic attacks. One the other hand we advocate the importance of a system oriented approach towards the design and deployment of new families of one-way hash algorithms that support greater scalability and facilitate migration to newer member algorithms upon the compromise of deployed ones. We base our observations on a common sense premise that there is no specific one-way hash algorithm can remain secure forever and it will eventually be broken by a cryptanalytic attack faster than exhaustive research.

Cellular Automaton (CA) has been shown to be capable of generating complex and random patterns out of simple rules. There has been constant efforts of applying CA to develop ciphers, but the attempts have not been successful. This paper describes how repeated application of simple CA transforms may be used to achieve confusion and diffusion, needed in block ciphers. The components have been evaluated for their robustness against conventional cryptanalysis and the results have been found to be comparable to standards. Finally, the parts are assembled in an unconventional way to construct a self-invertibe CA based round, which is resistant against linear and differential cryptanalysis and yet can be efficiently implemented.

We examine the popular proof models for group key establishment of Bresson et al. and point out missing security properties that are present in some models for two-party key establishment. These properties are actually of more importance in group key establishments due to the possibility of malicious insiders. We show that established group key establishment schemes from CRYPTO 2003 and ASIACRYPT 2004 do not fully meet these new requirements. Next to giving a formal definition of these extended security properties, we prove a variant of the explored proposal from ASIACRYPT 2004 secure in this stricter sense.

We show how to public-key obfuscate two commonly used shuffles: decryption shuffles which permute and decrypt ciphertexts, and re-encryption shuffles which permute and re-encrypt ciphertexts. Given a trusted party that samples and obfuscates a shuffle \emph{before} any ciphertexts are received, this reduces the problem of constructing a mix-net to verifiable joint decryption. We construct a decryption shuffle from any additively homomorphic cryptosystem and show how it can be public-key obfuscated. This construction does not allow efficient distributed verifiable decryption. Then we show how to public-key obfuscate: a decryption shuffle based on the Boneh-Goh-Nissim (BGN) cryptosystem, and a re-encryption shuffle based on the Paillier cryptosystem. Both constructions allow \emph{efficient} distributed verifiable decryption. In the Paillier case we identify and exploit a previously overlooked ``homomorphic'' property of the cryptosystem. Finally, we give a distributed protocol for sampling and obfuscating each of the above shuffles and show how it can be used in a trivial way to construct a universally composable mix-net. Our constructions are practical when the number of senders $N$ is reasonably small, e.g. $N=350$ in the BGN case and $N=2000$ in the Paillier case.

This thesis gives an overview of Multivariate Quadratic polynomial equations and their use in public key cryptography. In the first chapter, some general terms of cryptography are introduced. In particular, the need for public key cryptography and alternative schemes is motivated, i.e., systems which neither use factoring (like RSA, Rivest-Shamir-Adleman) nor the discrete logarithm (like ECC, elliptic curve cryptography). This is followed by a brief introduction of finite fields and a general discussion about Multivariate Quadratic systems of equations and ways of representing them. In this context, affine transformations and their representations are also discussed. After these tools are introduced, they are used to show how Multivariate Quadratic equations can be used for signature and encryption applications. In addition, the problem of Multivariate Quadratic polynomial equations is put into perspective and a link with the theory of NP-completeness is established. The second chapter concludes with the two related problems "isomorphism of polynomials" and "minimal rank" of the sum of matrices. Both prove useful in the cryptanalysis of Multivariate Quadratic systems. The main part of this thesis is about concrete trapdoors for the problem of Multivariate Quadratic public key systems. We can show that all such systems fall in one of the following four classes: unbalanced oil and vinegar systems (UOV), stepwise triangular systems (STS), Matsumoto-Imai Scheme A (MIA), and hidden field equations (HFE). Moreover, we demonstrate the use of several modifiers. In order to evaluate the security of these four basic trapdoors and their modifiers, we review some cryptanalytic results. In particular, we were able to develop our own contributions in this field by demonstrating an affine approximation attack and an attack using Gr"obner base computations against the UOV class. Moreover, we derived a key recovery and inversion attack against the STS class. Using our knowledge of the HFE class, we develop two secure versions of the signature scheme Quartz. Another important part of this thesis is the study of the key space of Multivariate Quadratic public key systems. Using special classes of affine transformations, denoted ``sustainers", we are able to show that all four basic classes have some redundancy in their key spaces and hence, have a smaller key space than previously expected. In particular for the UOV and the STS class, this reduction proves quite dramatic. For HFE and MIA, we only find some minor redundancies. Moreover, we are able to show that our results for MIA are the only ones possible, i.e., there are no other redundancies than the one we describe in this thesis. In addition, we extend our results to several important variations of HFE and MIA, namely HFE-, HFEv, HFEv-, and MIA-. They have been used in practice for the construction of signature schemes, namely Quartz and Sflash. In order to demonstrate the practical relevance of Multivariate Quadratic constructions and also of our taxonomy, we show some concrete examples. In particular, we consider the NESSIE submissions Flash, Sflash, and Quartz and discuss their advantages and disadvantages. Moreover, we describe some more recent developments, namely the STS-based schemes enhanced TTS, Tractable Rational Maps, and Rainbow. Then we move on to some application domains for Multivariate Quadratic public key systems. In particular, we see applications in the area of product activation keys, electronic stamps and fast one-way functions. Finally, we suggest some new schemes. In particular, we give a generalisation of MIA to odd characteristics and also investigate some other trapdoors like STS and UOV with the branching and the homogenisation modifiers. All in all, we believe that Multivariate Quadratic polynomial systems are a very practical solution to the problem of public key cryptography. At present, it is not possible to use them for encryption. However, we are confident that it will be possible to overcome this problem soon and use Multivariate Quadratic constructions both for encrypting and signing.

An efficient variant of RSA cryptosystem was proposed by Cesar [2]. He called it Rprime RSA. The Rprime RSA is a combination of Mprime RSA [3] and Rebalanced RSA [9, 1]. Although the decryption speed of Rprime RSA is 27 times faster than the standard RSA and 8 times faster than the QC RSA [6] in theoretically, yet due to the large encryption exponent, the encryption process becomes slower than the standard RSA. In this paper we tried to improve the efficiency of encryption process with less compromising with the decryption speed.

The design principle of Merkle-Damgård construction is collision resistance of the compression function implies collision resistance of the hash function. Recently multi-block collisions have been found on the hash functions MD5, SHA-0 and SHA-1 using differential cryptanalysis. These multi-block collisions raise several questions on some definitions and properties used in the hash function literature. In this report, we take a closer look at some of the literature in cryptographic hash functions and give our insights on them. We bring out some important differences between the 1989's Damgård's hash function and the hash functions that followed it. We conclude that these hash functions did not consider the pseudo-collision attack in their design criteria. We also doubt whether these hash functions achieve the design principle of Merkle-Damgård's construction. We formalise some definitions on the properties of hash functions in the literature.

We propose a new cryptographic construction called 3C, which works as a pseudorandom function (PRF), message authentication code (MAC) and cryptographic hash function. The 3C-construction is obtained by modifying the Merkle-Damgard iterated construction used to construct iterated hash functions. We assume that the compression functions of Merkle-Damgard iterated construction realize a family of fixed-length-input pseudorandom functions (FI-PRFs). A concrete security analysis for the family of 3C- variable-length-input pseudorandom functions (VI-PRFs) is provided in a precise and quantitative manner. The 3C- VI-PRF is then used to realize the 3C- MAC construction called one-key NMAC (O-NMAC). O-NMAC is a more efficient variant of NMAC and HMAC in the applications where key changes frequently and the key cannot be cached. The 3C-construction works as a new mode of hash function operation for the hash functions based on Merkle-Damgard construction such as MD5 and SHA-1. The generic 3C- hash function is more resistant against the recent differential multi-block collision attacks than the Merkle-Damgard hash functions and the extension attacks do not work on the 3C- hash function. The 3C-X hash function is the simplest and efficient variant of the generic 3C hash function and it is the simplest modification to the Merkle-Damgard hash function that one can achieve. We provide the security analysis for the functions 3C and 3C-X against multi-block collision attacks and generic attacks on hash functions. We combine the wide-pipe hash function with the 3C hash function for even better security against some generic attacks and differential attacks. The 3C-construction has all these features at the expense of one extra iteration of the compression function over the Merkle-Damgard construction.