Dennis Hofheinz

Bonsai trees, or how to delegate a lattice basis

We introduce a new lattice-based cryptographic structure called a bonsai tree, and use it to resolve some important open problems in the area. Applications of bonsai trees include: An efficient, stateless ‘hash-and-sign’ signature scheme in the standard model (i.e., no random oracles), and The first hierarchical identity-based encryption (HIBE) scheme (also in the standard model) that does not rely on bilinear pairings. Interestingly, the abstract properties of bonsai trees seem to have no known realization in conventional number-theoretic cryptography.

Secure hybrid encryption from weakened key encapsulation

We put forward a new paradigm for building hybrid encryption schemes from constrained chosen-ciphertext secure (CCCA) key-encapsulation mechanisms (KEMs) plus authenticated symmetric encryption. Constrained chosen-ciphertext security is a new security notion for KEMs that we propose. It has less demanding security requirements than standard CCCA security (since it requires the adversary to have a certain plaintext-knowledge when making a decapsulation query) yet we can prove that it is CCCA sufficient for secure hybrid encryption. Our notion is not only useful to express the Kurosawa-Desmedt public-key encryption scheme and its generalizations to hash-proof systems in an abstract KEM/DEM security framework. It also has a very constructive appeal, which we demonstrate with a new encryption scheme whose security relies on a class of intractability assumptions that we show (in the generic group model) strictly weaker than the Decision Diffie-Hellman (DDH) assumption. This appears to be the first practical public-key encryption scheme in the literature from an algebraic assumption strictly weaker than DDH.

Programmable Hash Functions and Their Applications

We introduce a new information-theoretic primitive called programmable hash functions(PHFs). PHFs can be used to programthe output of a hash function such that it contains solved or unsolved discrete logarithm instances with a certain probability. This is a technique originally used for security proofs in the random oracle model. We give a variety of standard modelrealizations of PHFs (with different parameters). The programmability of PHFs make them a suitable tool to obtain black-box proofs of cryptographic protocols when considering adaptive attacks. We propose generic digital signature schemes from the strong RSA problem and from some hardness assumption on bilinear maps that can be instantiated with any PHF. Our schemes offer various improvements over known constructions. In particular, for a reasonable choice of parameters, we obtain short standard model digital signatures over bilinear maps.

Practical Chosen Ciphertext Secure Encryption from Factoring

We propose a practical public-key encryption scheme whose security against chosen-ciphertext attacks can be reduced in the standard model to the assumption that factoring is intractable.

Tightly Secure Signatures and Public-Key Encryption

We construct the first public-key encryption scheme whose chosen-ciphertext i.e., IND-CCA security can be proved under a standard assumption and does not degrade in either the number of users or the number of ciphertexts. In particular, our scheme can be safely deployed in unknown settings in which no a-priori bound on the number of encryptions and/or users is known. As a central technical building block, we construct the first structure-preserving signature scheme with a tight security reduction. This signature scheme may be of independent interest. Combining this scheme with Groth-Sahai proofs yields a tightly simulation-sound non-interactive zero-knowledge proof system for group equations. If we use this proof system in the Naor-Yung double encryption scheme, we obtain a tightly IND-CCA secure public-key encryption scheme from the Decision Linear assumption. We point out that our techniques are not specific to public-key encryption security. Rather, we view our signature scheme and proof system as general building blocks that can help to achieve a tight security reduction.

Bounded key-dependent message security

We construct the first public-key encryption scheme that is proven secure (in the standard model, under standard assumptions) even when the attacker gets access to encryptions of arbitrary efficient functions of the secret key. Specifically, under either the DDH or LWE assumption, and for arbitrary but fixed polynomials L and N, we obtain a public-key encryption scheme that resists key-dependent message (KDM) attacks for up to N(k) public keys and functions of circuit size up to L(k), where k denotes the size of the secret key. We call such a scheme bounded KDM secure. Moreover, we show that our scheme suffices for one of the important applications of KDM security: ability to securely instantiate symbolic protocols with axiomatic proofs of security. We also observe that any fully homomorphic encryption scheme that additionally enjoys circular security and circuit privacy is fully KDM secure in the sense that its algorithms can be independent of the polynomials L and N as above. Thus, the recent fully homomorphic encryption scheme of Gentry (STOC 2009) is fully KDM secure under certain non-standard hardness assumptions. Finally, we extend an impossibility result of Haitner and Holenstein (TCC 2009), showing that it is impossible to prove KDM security against a family of query functions that contains exponentially hard pseudorandom functions if the proof makes only a black-box use of the query function and the adversary attacking the scheme. This shows that the non-black-box use of the query function in our proof of security is inherent.

Bonsai Trees, or How to Delegate a Lattice Basis

We introduce a new lattice-based cryptographic structure called a bonsai tree, and use it to resolve some important open problems in the area. Applications of bonsai trees include an efficient, stateless ‘hash-and-sign’ signature scheme in the standard model (i.e., no random oracles), and the first hierarchical identity-based encryption (HIBE) scheme (also in the standard model) that does not rely on bilinear pairings. Interestingly, the abstract properties of bonsai trees seem to have no known realization in conventional number-theoretic cryptography.

A Practical Attack on Some Braid Group Based Cryptographic Primitives

A simple heuristic approach to the conjugacy problem in braid groups is described. Although it does not provide a general solution to the latter problem, it demonstrates that various proposed key parameters for braid group based cryptographic primitives do not offer acceptable cryptographic security. We give experimental evidence that it is often feasible to reveal the secret data by means of a normal PC within a few minutes.

Obfuscation for Cryptographic Purposes

Loosely speaking, an obfuscation O of a function f should satisfy two requirements: firstly, using O, it should be possible to evaluate f; secondly, O should not reveal anything about f that cannot be learnt from oracle access to f alone. Several definitions for obfuscation exist. However, most of them are very hard to satisfy, even when focusing on specific applications such as obfuscating a point function (e.g., for authentication purposes).In this work, we propose and investigate two new variants of obfuscation definitions. Our definitions are simulation-based (i.e., require the existence of a simulator that can efficiently generate fake obfuscations) and demand only security on average (over the choice of the obfuscated function). We stress that our notions are not free from generic impossibilities: there exist natural classes of function families that cannot be securely obfuscated. Hence we cannot hope for a general-purpose obfuscator with respect to our definition. However, we prove that there also exist several natural classes of functions for which our definitions yield interesting results.Specifically, we show that our definitions have the following properties: Usefulness:Securely obfuscating (the encryption function of) a secure private-key encryption scheme yields a secure public-key encryption scheme.Achievability:There exist obfuscatable private-key encryption schemes. Also, a point function chosen uniformly at random can easily be obfuscated with respect to the weaker one (but not the stronger one) of our definitions. (Previous work focused on obfuscating point functions from arbitrary distributions.)Generic impossibilities:There exist unobfuscatable private-key encryption schemes. Furthermore, pseudorandom functions cannot be obfuscated with respect to our definitions. Our results show that, while it is hard to avoid generic impossibilities, useful and reasonable obfuscation definitions are possible when considering specific tasks (i.e., function families).

Bounded CCA2-secure encryption

Whereas encryption schemes withstanding passive chosen-plaintext attacks (CPA) can be constructed based on a variety of computational assumptions, only a few assumptions are known to imply the existence of encryption schemes withstanding adaptive chosen-ciphertext attacks (CCA2). Towards addressing this asymmetry, we consider a weakening of the CCA2 model--bounded CCA2-security -- wherein security needs only hold against adversaries that make an a-priori bounded number of queries to the decryption oracle. Regarding this notion we show (without any further assumptions): - For any polynomial q, a simple black-box construction of q-bounded IND-CCA2-secure encryption schemes, from any IND-CPA-secure encryption scheme. When instantiated with the Decisional Diffie-Hellman (DDH) assumption, this construction additionally yields encryption schemes with very short ciphertexts. - For any polynomial q, a (non-black box) construction of q-bounded NM-CCA2-secure encryption schemes, from any IND-CPA-secure encryption scheme. Bounded-CCA2 non-malleability is the strongest notion of security yet known to be achievable assuming only the existence of IND-CPA secure encryption schemes. Finally, we show that non-malleability and indistinguishability are not equivalent under bounded-CCA2 attacks (in contrast to general CCA2 attacks).