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arXiv:2010.08445 · Leibniz international proceedings in informatics

Barrington Plays Cards: The Complexity of Card-Based Protocols

Pavel Dvořák, Michal Koucký

Published Oct 16, 2020• 6 citations
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Abstract

In this paper we study the computational complexity of functions that have efficient card-based protocols. Card-based protocols were proposed by den Boer [EUROCRYPT '89] as a means for secure two-party computation. Our contribution is two-fold: We classify a large class of protocols with respect to the computational complexity of functions they compute, and we propose other encodings of inputs which require fewer cards than the usual 2-card representation.

DOI
10.4230/lipics.stacs.2021.26

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•Jan 1, 2020•0 citations
In this paper we study the computational complexity of functions that have efficient card-based protocols. Card-based protocols were proposed by den Boer [EUROCRYPT '89] as a means for secure two-party computation. Our contribution is two-fold: We classify a large class of protocols with respect to the computational complexity of functions they compute, and we propose other encodings of inputs which require fewer cards than the usual 2-card representation.
Abstract Card-based cryptography is a secure computation protocol realized by using physical cards. There are two models on card-based cryptography: public and private models. We adopt private one that allows players to handle cards privately. While much of the existing works for card-based cryptography use two-colored cards, it is also a vital task to construct an efficient protocol with playing cards. In the public model, 2n cards are necessary for any n-bit input protocol since at least two cards are required to express a Boolean value. It holds true for both two-colored and playing-card settings. On the other hand, the private model enables us to construct a protocol with fewer than 2n cards. However, all existing protocols that achieve such properties are only in the two-colored setting. This paper shows that the private model enables us to construct a protocol with fewer than 2n cards using the playing cards. We first show two-bit input protocols with fewer than four cards for logical operations, AND, OR, and XOR. Furthermore, we show a three-input majority voting protocol using only three cards, which is constructed by combining our AND and OR protocols. Notably, our proposed protocols require no randomness. All operations are deterministic and depend only on players’ private inputs.
Card-based cryptography, as first proposed by den Boer [den Boer, 1989], enables secure multiparty computation using only a deck of playing cards. Many protocols as of yet come with an “honest-but-curious” disclaimer. However, modern cryptography aims to provide security also in the presence of active attackers that deviate from the protocol description. In the few places where authors argue for the active security of their protocols, this is done ad-hoc and restricted to the concrete operations needed, often using additional physical tools, such as envelopes or sliding cover boxes. This paper provides the first systematic approach to active security in card-based protocols. The main technical contribution concerns shuffling operations. A shuffle randomly permutes the cards according to a well-defined distribution but hides the chosen permutation from the players. We show how the large and natural class of uniform closed shuffles, which are shuffles that select a permutation uniformly at random from a permutation group, can be implemented using only a linear number of helping cards. This ensures that any protocol in the model of Mizuki and Shizuya [Mizuki and Shizuya, 2014] can be realized in an actively secure fashion, as long as it is secure in this abstract model and restricted to uniform closed shuffles. Uniform closed shuffles are already sufficient for securely computing any circuit [Mizuki and Sone, 2009]. In the process, we develop a more concrete model for card-based cryptographic protocols with two players, which we believe to be of independent interest.
Abstract Card-based cryptography is a variant of multi-party computation using physical cards like playing cards. There are two models on card-based cryptography, called public and private models. The public model assumes that all operations are executed publicly, while the private model allows the players private operations called private permutations (PP, for short). Much of the existing card-based protocols were developed under the public model. Under the public model, 2ncards are necessary for every protocol withn-bit input since at least two cards are required to express a bit. In this paper, we proposen-bit input protocols with fewer than 2ncards by utilizing PP, which shows the power of PP. In particular, we show that a protocol for (n-bit input) threshold function can be realized with only n+1n+1n+1 n+1 cards by reducing the threshold function to the majority voting. Toward this end, we first offer that two-bit input protocols for logic gates can be realized with fewer than four cards. Furthermore, we construct a new protocol for three-input majority voting with only four cards by observing the relationship between AND/OR operations. This protocol can be easily extended to more participants, and to the protocol for threshold functions.
A card-based secure computation protocol is a method for nnn parties to compute a function fff on their private inputs (x1,…,xn)(x_1,\ldots,x_n)(x1​,…,xn​) using physical playing cards, in such a way that the suits of revealed cards leak no information beyond the value of f(x1,…,xn)f(x_1,\ldots,x_n)f(x1​,…,xn​). A \textit{single-shuffle full-open} protocol is a minimal model of card-based secure computation in which, after the parties place face-down cards representing their inputs, a single shuffle operation is performed and then all cards are opened to derive the output. Despite the simplicity of this model, the class of functions known to admit single-shuffle full-open protocols has been limited to a few small examples. In this work, we prove for the first time that every function admits a single-shuffle full-open protocol. We present two constructions that offer a trade-off between the number of cards and the complexity of the shuffle operation. These feasibility results are derived from a novel connection between single-shuffle full-open protocols and a cryptographic primitive known as \textit{Private Simultaneous Messages} protocols, which has rarely been studied in the context of card-based cryptography. We also present variants of single-shuffle protocols in which only a subset of cards are revealed. These protocols reduce the complexity of the shuffle operation compared to existing protocols in the same setting.
Card-based cryptography uses physical playing cards to construct protocols for secure multi-party computation. Existing card-based protocols employ various types of shuffles, some of which are easy to implement in practice while others are considerably more complex. In this paper, we classify shuffle operations into several levels according to their implementation complexity. We motivate this hierarchy from both practical and theoretical perspectives, and prove separation results between several levels by showing that certain shuffles cannot be realized using only operations from lower levels. Finally, we propose a new complexity measure for evaluating card-based protocols based on this hierarchy.
Research in secure multi-party computation using a deck of playing cards, often called card-based cryptography, dates back to 1989 when Den Boer introduced the five-card trick to compute the logical AND function. Since then, many protocols to compute different functions have been developed. In this paper, we propose a new encoding scheme using five cards to encode each integer in Z/6Z\mathbb{Z}/6\mathbb{Z}Z/6Z. Using this encoding scheme, we develop protocols that can copy a commitment with 13 cards, add two integers with 10 cards, and multiply two integers with 16 cards. All of our protocols are the currently best known protocols in terms of the required number of cards. Our encoding scheme can also be generalized to encode integers in Z/nZ\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}Z/nZ for other values of nnn as well.