We study the question of basing symmetric key cryptography on weak secrets. In this setting, Alice and Bob share an n-bit secret W, which might not be uniformly random, but the adversary has at least k bits of uncertainty about it (formalized using conditional min-entropy). Since standard symmetric-key primitives require uniformly random secret keys, we would like to construct an authenticated key agreement protocol in which Alice and Bob use W to agree on a nearly uniform key R, by communicating over a public channel controlled by an active adversary Eve. We study this question in the information theoretic setting where the attacker is computationally unbounded. We show that single-round (i.e. one message) protocols do not work when k ≤ n/2, and require poor parameters even when n/2<k<<n.
We study the question of basing symmetric key cryptography on weak secrets. In this setting, Alice and Bob share an n-bit secret W, which might not be uniformly random, but the adversary has at least k bits of uncertainty about it (formalized using conditional min-entropy). Since standard symmetric-key primitives require uniformly random secret keys, we would like to construct an authenticated key agreement protocol in which Alice and Bob use W to agree on a nearly uniform key R, by communicating over a public channel controlled by an active adversary Eve. We study this question in the information theoretic setting where the attacker is computationally unbounded. We show that single-round (i.e. one message) protocols do not work when k ≤ n/2, and require poor parameters even when n/2<k<<n.
We study the question of basing symmetric key cryptography on weak secrets. In this setting, Alice and Bob share an n-bit secret W, which might not be uniformly random, but the adversary has at least k bits of uncertainty about it (formalized using conditional min-entropy). Since standard symmetrickey primitives require uniformly random secret keys, we would like to construct an authenticated key agreement protocol in which Alice and Bob use W to agree on a nearly uniform key R, by communicating over a public channel controlled by an active adversary Eve. We study this question in the information theoretic setting where the attacker is computationally unbounded. We show that single-round (i.e. one message) protocols do not work when k ≤ n 2, and require poor parameters even when n 2 < k ≪ n. On the other hand, for arbitrary values of k, we design a communication efficient two-round (challenge-response) protocol extracting nearly k random bits. This dramatically improves the previous construction of Renner and Wolf [RW03], which requires Θ(λ + log(n)) rounds where λ is the security parameter. Our solution takes a new approach by studying and constructing “non-malleable” seeded randomness extractors — if an attacker sees a random seed X and comes up with an arbitrarily related seed X ′, then we bound the relationship between R = Ext(W;X) and R ′ = Ext(W;X ′). We also extend our two-round key agreement protocol to the “fuzzy ” setting, where Alice and Bob share “close ” (but not equal) secrets WA and WB, and to the Bounded Retrieval Model (BRM) where the size of the secret W is huge.
We study the problem of privacy amplification with an active adversary in the information theoretic setting. In this setting, two parties Alice and Bob start out with a shared n-bit weak random string W, and try to agree on a secret random key R over a public channel fully controlled by an active and unbounded adversary. Typical assumptions are that these two parties have access to local private uniform random bits. In this paper we seek to minimize the requirements on the local randomness used by the two parties. We make two improvements over previous results. First, we reduce the number of random bits needed for each party to Θ(ℓ+logn), where ℓ is the security parameter, as long as W has min-entropy nΩ(1). Previously, the best known result needs to use Θ((ℓ+logn)logn) bits. Our result is also asymptotically optimal. Second, we generalize the problem to the case where the two parties only have local weak random sources instead of truly uniform random bits. We show that when each party has a local weak random source with min-entropy >n/2, there is an efficient privacy amplification protocol that works nearly as good as if the two parties have access to local uniform random bits. Next, in the case where each party only has a weak random source with arbitrarily linear min-entropy, we give an efficient privacy amplification protocol where we can achieve security parameter up to Ω(logk). Our results give the first protocols that achieve privacy amplification when each party only has access to a local weak random source.
In privacy amplification, two mutually trusted parties aim to amplify the secrecy of an initial shared secret X in order to establish a shared private key K by exchanging messages over an insecure communication channel. If the channel is authenticated the task can be solved in a single round of communication using a strong randomness extractor; choosing a quantum-proof extractor allows one to establish security against quantum adversaries. In the case that the channel is not authenticated, Dodis and Wichs (STOC'09) showed that the problem can be solved in two rounds of communication using a non-malleable extractor, a stronger pseudo-random construction than a strong extractor. We give the first construction of a non-malleable extractor that is secure against quantum adversaries. The extractor is based on a construction by Li (FOCS'12), and is able to extract from source of min-entropy rates larger than 1/2. Combining this construction with a quantum-proof variant of the reduction of Dodis and Wichs, shown by Cohen and Vidick (unpublished), we obtain the first privacy amplification protocol secure against active quantum adversaries.
This is the third part of a three-part paper on se- cret-key agreement secure against active adversaries. Here, we con- sider the special case where the legitimate partners already share a mutual string which might, however, be partially known to the adversary. The problem of generating a key in this case has been well studied in the passive-adversary model—for instance, in the context of quantum key agreement—under the name of privacy amplification. We consider the same problem with respect to an ac- tive adversary and propose two protocols, one based on universal hashing and one based on extractors, allowing for privacy ampli- fication secure against an adversary whose knowledge about the initial partially string is limited to one third of the length of this string. Our results are based on novel techniques for au- thentication secure even against adversaries knowing a substantial amount of the secret key. information about . From Eve's point of view, the length of can in this case be roughly equal to the Renyi entropy of . In this paper, we investigate the same problem under the as- sumption that the communication between Alice and Bob is not authenticated. Note that, in contrast to the model where many independent repetitions of the involved random variables are given (15), the same piece of information must be used here both for authentication and as the input for privacy amplifica- tion. Two problems that arise in this context are authentication with an only partially key, and the fact that this authenti- cation leaks information about , hence potentially also about , to the adversary. We show that for our purpose, a new, inter- active, authentication method is better than one-way authentica- tion by strongly universal hashing, and that so-called extractors, requiring fewer random bits (i.e., shorter messages to be com- municated), are a better technique for privacy amplification than
We study the problem of "privacy amplification": key agreement between two parties who both know a weak secret w, such as a password. (Such a setting is ubiquitous on the internet, where passwords are the most commonly used security device.) We assume that the key agreement protocol is taking place in the presence of an active computationally unbounded adversary Eve. The adversary may have partial knowledge about w, so we assume only that w has some entropy from Eve's point of view. Thus, the goal of the protocol is to convert this non-uniform secret w into a uniformly distributed string R that is fully secret from Eve. R may then be used as a key for running symmetric cryptographic protocols (such as encryption, authentication, etc.).
In studying how to communicate over a public channel with an active adversary, Dodis and Wichs introduced the notion of a non-malleable extractor. A non-malleable extractor dramatically strengthens the notion of a strong extractor. A strong extractor takes two inputs, a weakly-random x and a uniformly random seed y, and outputs a string which appears uniform, even given y. For a non-malleable extractor nmExt, the output nmExt(x,y) should appear uniform given y as well as nmExt(x,A(y)), where A is an arbitrary function with A(y) not equal to y. We show that an extractor introduced by Chor and Goldreich is non-malleable when the entropy rate is above half. It outputs a linear number of bits when the entropy rate is 1/2 + alpha, for any alpha>0. Previously, no nontrivial parameters were known for any non-malleable extractor. To achieve a polynomial running time when outputting many bits, we rely on a widely-believed conjecture about the distribution of prime numbers in arithmetic progressions. Our analysis involves a character sum estimate, which may be of independent interest. Using our non-malleable extractor, we obtain protocols for "privacy amplification": key agreement between two parties who share a weakly-random secret. Our protocols work in the presence of an active adversary with unlimited computational power, and have asymptotically optimal entropy loss. When the secret has entropy rate greater than 1/2, the protocol follows from a result of Dodis and Wichs, and takes two rounds. When the secret has entropy rate delta for any constant delta>0, our new protocol takes a constant (polynomial in 1/delta) number of rounds. Our protocols run in polynomial time under the above well-known conjecture about primes.