Inspired by the no-cloning theorem in quantum theory, a variety of quantum cryptographic primitives with unclonable functionalities, such as secure key leasing and copy protection, have been proposed and attracted significant attention. However, trapdoor functions (TDFs), fundamental primitives in public-key cryptography, have not been extensively studied in these areas. In this work, we initiate a study of TDFs in both secure key leasing and copy protection settings. We first introduce the definition of TDFs with secure key leasing (TDF-SKL), which enables leasing and deleting of quantum trapdoors. We formalize TDF-SKL both with and without domain sampler, and give a construction of TDF-SKL without domain sampler based on the LWE assumption and a construction of TDF-SKL with domain sampler based on any standard PKE schemes combined with hinting pseudorandom generators [Koppula and Waters, CRYPTO 2019]. Next, we define TDFs with copy protection (TDF-CP), where the inversion functionality is copy protected by a quantum trapdoor. We establish a construction of TDF-CP assuming indistinguishability obfuscation and the LWE assumption, following a modular framework of copy protection proposed by Ananth and Behera [CRYPTO 2024]. We also present applications of TDF-SKL and TDF-CP. Existing constructions of public-key encryption with secure key leasing (PKE-SKL) and single-decryptor encryption (SDE) suffer from a critical vulnerability: quantum decryption keys may be destroyed after decrypting maliciously chosen ciphertexts. We construct PKE-SKL schemes and SDE schemes with robust quantum decryption keys that remain reusable after decrypting arbitrary ciphertexts from TDF-SKL and TDF-CP, respectively.
Inspired by the no-cloning theorem in quantum theory, a variety of quantum cryptographic primitives with unclonable functionalities, such as secure key leasing and copy protection, have been proposed and attracted significant attention. However, trapdoor functions (TDFs), fundamental primitives in public-key cryptography, have not been extensively studied in these areas. In this work, we initiate a study of TDFs in both secure key leasing and copy protection settings. We first introduce the definition of TDFs with secure key leasing (TDF-SKL), which enables leasing and deleting of quantum trapdoors. We formalize TDF-SKL both with and without domain sampler, and give a construction of TDF-SKL without domain sampler based on the LWE assumption and a construction of TDF-SKL with domain sampler based on any standard PKE schemes combined with hinting pseudorandom generators [Koppula and Waters, CRYPTO 2019]. Next, we define TDFs with copy protection (TDF-CP), where the inversion functionality is copy protected by a quantum trapdoor. We establish a construction of TDF-CP assuming indistinguishability obfuscation and the LWE assumption, following a modular framework of copy protection proposed by Ananth and Behera [CRYPTO 2024]. We also present applications of TDF-SKL and TDF-CP. Existing constructions of public-key encryption with secure key leasing (PKE-SKL) and single-decryptor encryption (SDE) suffer from a critical vulnerability: quantum decryption keys may be destroyed after decrypting maliciously chosen ciphertexts. We construct PKE-SKL schemes and SDE schemes with robust quantum decryption keys that remain reusable after decrypting arbitrary ciphertexts from TDF-SKL and TDF-CP, respectively.
It is well known that quantum computers, when fully realized, pose a threat to most cryptosystems deployed today. On the other hand, quantum information is also known to enhance classical cryptography, in terms of improved security and efficiency. Surprisingly, quantum information can also provide guarantees that are completely impossible to attain classically. The class of quantum cryptographic primitives called unclonable primitives fall into this category, with quantum money being a canonical example. Intuitively, quantum money allows a bank to distribute currency in the form of quantum states that provably resist counterfeiting due to the no-cloning theorem of quantum mechanics. This is in sharp contrast to classical information, for which there is no fundamental barrier that prevents its duplication. This work focusses on another up-and-coming unclonable primitive referred to as secure key leasing (SKL). This is a notion that allows to encode secret keys into a quantum state that can be temporarily leased. For example, it allows decryption keys of a public-key encryption scheme to be leased, enabling the recipient to decrypt ciphertexts while it possesses the quantum state. Later, the recipient can provide a proof of deletion which ensures that they have effectively ``lost'' access to the leased key. SKL is especially useful for software distributors that wish to provide trial period access. It allows them to provide access to their service via leased quantum keys, where they can incentivize timely deletion using a refund. In more detail, this dissertation studies SKL schemes in the setting of collusion, where multiple users can be leased independently generated quantum keys that provide access to the same underlying secret-key. It involves the study of meaningful notions of collusion-resistant security in this context, which are more realistic for real world applications than schemes secure in the standalone (single-key/single-user) setting. Then, new constructions are provided to realize these notions, with an emphasis on utilizing standard/well-understood cryptographic assumptions. Another major focus of the work is on providing modular approaches to constructing collusion-resistant SKL. In this light, novel compilers for different variants of the primitive are motivated and explored in detail.
We propose the first error-tolerant secure key leasing (SKL) for public-key encryption. As with SKL in prior works, our protocol consists of a lessor and lessee. In the protocol, the lessor encodes its secret key into quantum states and leases the key to the lessee. Then, the lessor can ask the lessee to return the secret key at a later point. The lessor is able to check whether the lessee has returned its key honestly. However, our protocol works even when the leased secret key is subject to noise. The lessee decrypts the ciphertext correctly, and the lessor verifies the return of the secret key correctly when the amount of error is below a certain threshold. Our improved protocol does not change the encoding of the secret key, and thus adds no overhead to the quantum information processing. Our most significant result is a framework to analyze the trade-off between robustness against error and security. We bridge the security of the error-tolerant SKL and that of the error-tolerant certified deletion with shortened codes, which is a relatively less explored concept in coding theory.
Uncloneable decryptors are encryption schemes (with classical plaintexts and ciphertexts) with the added functionality of deriving uncloneable quantum states, called decryptors, which could be used to decrypt ciphers without knowledge of the secret key (Georgiou and Zhandry, IACR'20). We study uncloneable decryptors in the computational setting and provide increasingly strong security notions which extend the various indistinguishable security notions of symmetric encryption. We show that CPA secure uncloneable bit decryptors could be instantiated from a copy protection scheme (Aaronson, CCC'09) for any balanced binary function. We introduce a new notion of flip detection security for copy protection schemes inspired by the notions of left or right security for encryption schemes, and show that it could be used to instantiate CPA secure uncloneable decryptors for messages of unrestricted length. We then show how to strengthen the CPA security of uncloneable decryptors to CCA2 security using strong EUF-CMA secure digital signatures. We show that our constructions could be instantiated relative to either the quantum oracle used in [Aar09] or the classical oracle used in (Aaronson et al., CRYPTO'21) to instantiate copy protection schemes. Our constructions are the first to achieve CPA or CCA2 security in the symmetric setting.
Abstract. We give generic constructions of several fundamental cryptographic primitives based on a new encryption primitive that combines circular security for bit encryption with the so-called repro-ducibility property (Bellare et al. PKC 2003). At the heart of our constructions is a novel technique which gives a way of de-randomizing reproducible public-key bit-encryption schemes and also a way of reducing one-wayness conditions of a constructed trapdoor-function family (TDF) to circular security of the base scheme. The main primitives that we build from our encryption primitive include k-wise one-way TDFs (Rosen and Segev TCC 2009), CCA2-secure encryption and deterministic encryption. Our results demonstrate a new set of applications of circularly-secure encryption beyond fully-homomorphic encryption and symbolic soundness. Finally, we show the plausibility of our assumptions by showing that the DDH-based circularly-secure scheme of Boneh et al. (Crypto 2008) and the subgroup indistin-guishability based scheme of Brakerski and Goldwasser (Crypto 2010) are both reproducible.
Lossy trapdoor functions (LTFs) were first introduced by Peikert and Waters (STOC’08). Since their introduction, lossy trapdoor functions have found numerous applications. They can be used as tools to construct important cryptographic primitives such as injective one-way trapdoor functions, chosen-ciphertext-secure public key encryptions, deterministic encryptions, et al. In this paper, we focus on the lossy trapdoor functions in the presence of continuous leakage. We introduce the new notion of updatable lossy trapdoor functions (ULTFs) and give their formal definition and security properties. Based on these, we extend the security model to the LTFs against continuous leakage when the evaluation algorithm is leakage resilient. Under the standard DDH assumption and DCR assumption, respectively, we show two explicit lossy trapdoor functions against continuous leakage in the standard model. In these schemes, using the technology of matrix kernel, the trapdoor can be refreshed at regular intervals and the adversaries can learn unbounded leakage information on the trapdoor along the whole system life. At the same time, we also show the performance of the proposed schemes compared with the known existing continuous leakage resilient lossy trapdoor functions.
Copy-protection allows a software distributor to encode a program in such a way that it can be evaluated on any input, yet it cannot be "pirated" – a notion that is impossible to achieve in a classical setting. Aaronson (CCC 2009) initiated the formal study of quantum copy-protection schemes, and speculated that quantum cryptography could offer a solution to the problem thanks to the quantum no-cloning theorem. In this work, we introduce a quantum copy-protection scheme for a large class of evasive functions known as "compute-and-compare programs" – a more expressive generalization of point functions. A compute-and-compare program CC[f,y] is specified by a function f and a string y within its range: on input x , CC[f,y] outputs 1 , if f(x)=y , and 0 otherwise. We prove that our scheme achieves non-trivial security against fully malicious adversaries in the quantum random oracle model (QROM), which makes it the first copy-protection scheme to enjoy any level of provable security in a standard cryptographic model. As a complementary result, we show that the same scheme fulfils a weaker notion of software protection, called "secure software leasing", introduced very recently by Ananth and La Placa (eprint 2020), with a standard security bound in the QROM, i.e. guaranteeing negligible adversarial advantage. Finally, as a third contribution, we elucidate the relationship between unclonable encryption and copy-protection for multi-bit output point functions.