In the setting of secure multiparty computation, a set of mutually distrustful parties wish to jointly compute some function of their input (i.e., they wish to securely carry out some distributed task). %The joint computation should be such that even In the stand-alone case, it has been shown that every efficient function can be securely computed. However, in the setting of concurrent composition, broad impossibility results have been proven for the case where there is no honest majority (or trusted setup).In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of obtaining secure multiparty protocols in a network where certain time bounds are assumed. Specifically, the security of our protocols rely on the very reasonable assumption that local clocks do not "drift" too much (i.e., it is assumed that they proceed at approximately the same rate). We show that under this mild timing assumption, it is possible to securely compute any functionality under concurrent general composition (as long as messages from the arbitrary other protocols are delayed for a specified amount of time).
In the setting of secure multiparty computation, a set of mutually distrustful parties wish to jointly compute some function of their input (i.e., they wish to securely carry out some distributed task). %The joint computation should be such that even In the stand-alone case, it has been shown that every efficient function can be securely computed. However, in the setting of concurrent composition, broad impossibility results have been proven for the case where there is no honest majority (or trusted setup).In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of obtaining secure multiparty protocols in a network where certain time bounds are assumed. Specifically, the security of our protocols rely on the very reasonable assumption that local clocks do not "drift" too much (i.e., it is assumed that they proceed at approximately the same rate). We show that under this mild timing assumption, it is possible to securely compute any functionality under concurrent general composition (as long as messages from the arbitrary other protocols are delayed for a specified amount of time).
In the setting of secure multiparty computation, a set of mutually distrustful parties wish to securely compute some joint function of their inputs. In the stand-alone case, it has been shown that every efficient function can be securely computed. However, in the setting of concurrent composition, broad impossibility results have been proven for the case of no honest majority and no trusted setup phase. These results hold both for the case of general composition (where a secure protocol is run many times concurrently with arbitrary other protocols) and self composition (where a single secure protocol is run many times concurrently). In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of obtaining security in the concurrent setting, assuming that each party has a local clock and that these clocks proceed at approximately the same rate. We show that under this mild timing assumption, it is possible to securely compute any multiparty functionality under concurrent self composition. Loosely speaking, we also show that it is possible to securely compute any multiparty functionality under concurrent general composition, as long as the secure protocol is run only with protocols whose messages are delayed by a specified amount of time. On the negative side, we show that it is impossible to achieve security under concurrent general composition with no restrictions whatsoever on the network (like the aforementioned delays), even in the timing model.
Until recently, most research on the topic of secure computation focused on the stand-alone model, where a single protocol execution takes place. In this paper, we construct protocols for the setting of bounded-concurrent self composition, where a (single) secure protocol is run many times concurrently, and there is a predetermined bound on the number of concurrent executions. In short, we show that any two-party functionality can be securely computed under boundedconcurrent self composition, in the plain model (where the only setup assumption made is that the parties communicate via authenticated channels). Our protocol provides the first feasibility result for general two-party computation in the plain model, for any model of concurrency. All previous protocols assumed a trusted setup phase in order to obtain a common reference string. On the downside, the number of rounds of communication in our protocol is super-linear in the bound on the number of concurrent executions. However, we believe that our constructions will lead to more efficient protocols for this task.
In this paper we study the feasibility of obtaining protocols for general two-party computation that remain secure under concurrent composition. (A general protocol can be used for obtaining secure computation of any functionality.) We consider a scenario where no trusted setup is assumed (and so, for example, there is no common reference string available to the parties); we call this the "plain model". We present both negative and positive results for this model. Specifically, we show that a general two-party protocol that remains secure for m concurrent executions and can be proven via black-box simulation, must have more than m rounds of communication. An important corollary of this result is that there do not exist protocols for black-box secure general two-party computation for the case of unbounded concurrency (where any polynomial number of concurrent executions may be run). On the positive side, we show that under general cryptographic assumptions, there exist secure protocols for general two-party computation in the model of bounded concurrent composition (in this model the number of concurrent executions is fixed and the protocol design may depend on this number). Our protocol has O(m) rounds of communication, where m is the bound on the number of concurrent executions, and uses both black-box and non black-box techniques. We note that this protocol constitutes the first feasibility result for general two-party computation without setup assumptions for any model of concurrency.
In this paper we study the feasibility of obtaining protocols for general two-party computation that remain secure under concurrent composition. (A general protocol can be used for obtaining secure computation of any functionality.) We consider a scenario where no trusted setup is assumed (and so, for example, there is no common reference string available to the parties); we call this the "plain model". We present both negative and positive results for this model. Specifically, we show that a general two-party protocol that remains secure for m concurrent executions and can be proven via black-box simulation, must have more than m rounds of communication. An important corollary of this result is that there do not exist protocols for black-box secure general two-party computation for the case of unbounded concurrency (where any polynomial number of concurrent executions may be run). On the positive side, we show that under general cryptographic assumptions, there exist secure protocols for general two-party computation in the model of bounded concurrent composition (in this model the number of concurrent executions is fixed and the protocol design may depend on this number). Our protocol has O(m) rounds of communication, where m is the bound on the number of concurrent executions, and uses both black-box and non black-box techniques. We note that this protocol constitutes the first feasibility result for general two-party computation without setup assumptions for any model of concurrency.
Abstract. In the setting of secure multiparty computation, a set of parties wish to jointly compute some function of their inputs. Such a computation must preserve certain security properties, like privacy and correctness, even if some of the participating parties or an external adversary collude to attack the honest parties. Until this paper, all protocols for general secure computation assumed that the parties can communicate reliably via authenticated channels. In this paper, we consider the feasibility of secure computation without any setup assumption. We consider a completely unauthenticated setting, where all messages sent by the parties may be tampered with and modified by the adversary (without the honest parties being able to detect this fact). In this model, it is not possible to achieve the same level of security as in the authenticated-channel setting. Nevertheless, we show that meaningful security guarantees can be provided. In particular, we define a relaxed notion of what it means to “securely compute ” a function in the unauthenticated setting. Then, we construct protocols for securely realizing any functionality in the stand-alone model, with no setup assumptions whatsoever. In addition, we construct universally composable protocols for securely realizing any functionality in the common reference string model (while still in an unauthenticated network). We also show that our protocols can be used to provide conceptually simple and unified solutions to a number of problems that were studied separately in the past, including password-based authenticated key exchange and non-malleable commitments. 1
Universal composability and concurrent general composition consider a setting where secure protocols are run concurrently with each other and with arbitrary other possibly insecure protocols. Protocols that meet the definition of universal composability are guaranteed to remain secure even when run in this strongly adversarial setting. In the case of an honest majority, or where there is a trusted setup phase of some kind (like a common reference string or the keyregistration public-key infrastructure of Barak et al. in FOCS 2004), it has been shown that any functionality can be securely computed in a universally composable way. On the negative side, it has also been shown that in the plain model where there is no trusted setup at all, there are large classes of functionalities which cannot be securely computed in a universally composable way without an honest majority. In this paper we extend these impossibility results for universal composability. We study a number of public-key models and show for which models the impossibility results of universal composability hold and for which they do not. We also consider a setting where the inputs to the protocols running in the network are fixed before any execution begins. The majority of our results are negative and we show that the known impossibility results for universal composability in the case of no honest majority extend to many other settings.