New Results - Cryptographic protocols

Hans Delfs, Helmut Knebl

Samuel J. Lomonaco

The recent application of the principles of quantum mechanics to cryptography has led to a remarkable new dimension in secret communication. As a result of these new developments, it is now possible to construct cryptographic communication systems which detect unauthorized eavesdropping should it occur, and which give a guarantee of no eavesdropping should it not occur. CONTENTS P3. Cryptographic systems before quantum cryptography P7. Preamble to quantum cryptography P10. The BB84 quantum cryptographic protocol without noise P16. The BB84 quantum cryptographic protocol with noise P19..The B92 quantum cryptographic protocol P21. EPR quantum cryptographic protocols P25. Other protocols P25. Eavesdropping stategies and counter measures P26. Conclusion P29. Appendix A. The no cloning theorem P30. Appendix B. Proof that an undetectable eavesdropper can obtain no information from the B92 protocol P31. Appendix C. Part of a Rosetta stone for quantum mechanics P44. References

Meiran Galis, Tomislav Unkašević, Zoran Banjac +1 more

Introduction/purpose: The problem of efficient distribution of cryptographic keys in communication systems has existed since its first days and is especially emphasized by the emergence of mass communication systems. Defining and implementing efficient protocols for symmetric cryptographic keys establishment in such circumstances is of great importance in raising information security in cyberspace. Methods: Using the methods of Information Theory and Secure Multiparty Computation, protocols for direct establishment of cryptographic keys between communication parties have been defined. Results: The paper defines two new approaches to the problem of establishing cryptographic keys. The novelty in the protocol defined in the security model based on information theory is based on the source of common randomness, which in this case is the EEG signal of each subject participating in the communication system. Experimental results show that the amount of information leaking to the attacker is close to zero. A novelty in the second case, which provides security with keys at the level of computer security by applying Secure Multiparty Computation, is in the new application field, namely generation and distribution of symmetric cryptographic keys. It is characteristic of both approaches that within the framework of formal theories, it is possible to draw conclusions about their security characteristics in a formal way. Conclusions: The paper describes two new approaches for establishing cryptographic keys in symmetric cryptographic systems with experimental results. The significance of the proposed solutions lies in the fact that they enable the establishment of secure communication between communication parties from end to end, avoiding the influence of a trusted third party. In that way, the achieved communication level security significantly increases in relation to classical cryptographic systems.

Hans Delfs, Helmut Knebl

Hans Delfs, Helmut Knebl

Ronald Cramer, Ivan Damgård, Ueli M. Maurer

The contributions of this paper are three-fold. First, as an abstraction of previously proposed cryptographic protocols we propose two cryptographic primitives: homomorphic shared commitments and linear secret sharing schemes with an additional multiplication property. We describe new constructions for general secure multi-party computation protocols, both in the cryptographic and the information-theoretic (or secure channels) setting, based on any realizations of these primitives. Second, span programs, a model of computation introduced by Karchmer and Wigderson, are used as the basis for constructing new linear secret sharing schemes, from which the two above-mentioned primitives as well as a novel verifiable secret sharing scheme can efficiently be realized. Third, note that linear secret sharing schemes can have arbitrary (as opposed to threshold) access structures. If used in our construction, this yields multi-party protocols secure against general sets of active adversaries, as long as in the cryptographic (information-theoretic) model no two (no three) of these potentially misbehaving player sets cover the full player set. This is a strict generalization of the threshold-type adversaries and results previously considered in the literature. While this result is new for the cryptographic model, the result for the information-theoretic model was previously proved by Hirt and Maurer. However, in addition to providing an independent proof, our protocols are not recursive and have the potential of being more efficient.