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Succinct Functional Encryption and Applications: Reusable Garbled Circuits and Beyond.

Shafi Goldwasser, Yael Tauman Kalai, Raluca Ada Popa, Vinod Vaikuntanathan, Nickolai Zeldovich

Published Jan 1, 2012• 38 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Functional encryption is a powerful primitive: given an encryption Enc(x) of a value x and a secret key skf corresponding to a circuit f, it enables efficient computation of f(x) without revealing any additional information about x. Constructing functional encryption schemes with succinct ciphertexts that guarantee security for even a single secret key (for a general function f) is an important open problem with far reaching applications, which this paper addresses. Our main result is a functional encryption scheme for any general function f of depth d, with succinct ciphertexts whose size grows with the depth d rather than the size of the circuit for f. We prove the security of our construction based on the intractability of the learning with error (LWE) problem. More generally, we show how to construct a functional encryption scheme from any public-index predicate encryption scheme and fully homomorphic encryption scheme. Previously, the only known constructions of functional encryption were either for specific inner product predicates, or for a weak form of functional encryption where the ciphertext size grows with the size of the circuit for f. We demonstrate the power of this result, by using it to construct a reusable circuit garbling scheme with

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Garbled circuits, introduced by Yao in the mid 80s, allow computing a function f on an input x without leaking anything about f or x besides f(x). Garbled circuits found numerous applications, but every known construction suffers from one limitation: it offers no security if used on multiple inputs x. In this paper, we construct for the first time reusable garbled circuits. The key building block is a new succinct single-key functional encryption scheme. Functional encryption is an ambitious primitive: given an encryp-tion Enc(x) of a value x, and a secret key skf for a function f, anyone can compute f(x) without learning any other information about x. We construct, for the first time, a succinct functional encryption scheme for any polynomial-time function f where succinctness means that the ciphertext size does not grow with the size of the circuit for f, but only with its depth. The security of our construction is based on the intractability of the Learning with Errors (LWE) problem and holds as long as an adversary has access to a single key skf (or even an a priori bounded number of keys for different functions). Building on our succinct single-key functional encryption scheme, we show several new applications in addition to reusable garbled circuits, such as a paradigm for general function obfuscation which we call token-based obfuscation, homomorphic encryption for a class of Turing machines where the evaluation runs in input-specific time rather than worst-case time, and a scheme for delegating computation which is publicly verifiable and maintains the privacy of the computation.

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We construct a functional encryption scheme for circuits which simultaneously achieves and improves upon the security of the current best known, and incomparable, constructions from standard assumptions: reusable garbled circuits by Goldwasser, Kalai, Popa, Vaikuntanathan and Zeldovich (STOC 2013) [GKP+13] and predicate encryption for circuits by Gorbunov, Vaikuntanathan and Wee (CRYPTO 2015) [GVW15]. Our scheme is secure based on the learning with errors (LWE) assumption. Our construction implies: 1. A new construction for reusable garbled circuits that achieves stronger security than the only known prior construction [GKP+13]. 2. A new construction for bounded collusion functional encryption with substantial efficiency benefits: our public parameters and ciphertext size incur an additive growth of \(O(Q^2)\), where Q is the number of permissible queries (We note that due to a lower bound [AGVW13], the ciphertext size must necessarily grow with Q). Additionally, the ciphertext of our scheme is succinct, in that it does not depend on the size of the circuit. By contrast, the prior best construction [GKP+13, GVW12] incurred a multiplicative blowup of \(O(Q^4)\) in both the public parameters and ciphertext size. However, our scheme is secure in a weaker game than [GVW12].

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Journal of Cryptology•Dec 15, 2023•14 citations
Functional encryption is a powerful primitive: given an encryption Enc(x) of a value x and a secret key skf corresponding to a circuit f, it enables efficient computation of f(x) without revealing any additional information about x. Constructing functional encryption schemes with succinct ciphertexts that guarantee security for even a single secret key (for a general function f) is an important open problem with far reaching applications, which this paper addresses. Our main result is a functional encryption scheme for any general function f of depth d, with succinct ciphertexts whose size grows with the depth d rather than the size of the circuit for f. We prove the security of our construction based on the intractability of the learning with error (LWE) problem. More generally, we show how to construct a functional encryption scheme from any public-index predicate encryption scheme and fully homomorphic encryption scheme. Previously, the only known constructions of functional encryption were either for specific inner product predicates, or for a weak form of functional encryption where the ciphertext size grows with the size of the circuit for f. We demonstrate the power of this result, by using it to construct a reusable circuit garbling scheme with
Garbled circuits, introduced by Yao in the mid 80s, allow computing a function f on an input x without leaking anything about f or x besides f(x). Garbled circuits found numerous applications, but every known construction suffers from one limitation: it offers no security if used on multiple inputs x. In this paper, we construct for the first time reusable garbled circuits. The key building block is a new succinct single-key functional encryption scheme. Functional encryption is an ambitious primitive: given an encryp-tion Enc(x) of a value x, and a secret key skf for a function f, anyone can compute f(x) without learning any other information about x. We construct, for the first time, a succinct functional encryption scheme for any polynomial-time function f where succinctness means that the ciphertext size does not grow with the size of the circuit for f, but only with its depth. The security of our construction is based on the intractability of the Learning with Errors (LWE) problem and holds as long as an adversary has access to a single key skf (or even an a priori bounded number of keys for different functions). Building on our succinct single-key functional encryption scheme, we show several new applications in addition to reusable garbled circuits, such as a paradigm for general function obfuscation which we call token-based obfuscation, homomorphic encryption for a class of Turing machines where the evaluation runs in input-specific time rather than worst-case time, and a scheme for delegating computation which is publicly verifiable and maintains the privacy of the computation.
We construct a functional encryption scheme for circuits which simultaneously achieves and improves upon the security of the current best known, and incomparable, constructions from standard assumptions: reusable garbled circuits by Goldwasser, Kalai, Popa, Vaikuntanathan and Zeldovich (STOC 2013) [GKP+13] and predicate encryption for circuits by Gorbunov, Vaikuntanathan and Wee (CRYPTO 2015) [GVW15]. Our scheme is secure based on the learning with errors (LWE) assumption. Our construction implies: 1. A new construction for reusable garbled circuits that achieves stronger security than the only known prior construction [GKP+13]. 2. A new construction for bounded collusion functional encryption with substantial efficiency benefits: our public parameters and ciphertext size incur an additive growth of O(Q2)O(Q^2)O(Q2), where Q is the number of permissible queries (We note that due to a lower bound [AGVW13], the ciphertext size must necessarily grow with Q). Additionally, the ciphertext of our scheme is succinct, in that it does not depend on the size of the circuit. By contrast, the prior best construction [GKP+13, GVW12] incurred a multiplicative blowup of O(Q4)O(Q^4)O(Q4) in both the public parameters and ciphertext size. However, our scheme is secure in a weaker game than [GVW12].
We provide a single-key functional encryption scheme for Deterministic Finite Automata (DFA). The secret key of our scheme is associated with a DFA M, and a ciphertext is associated with an input x of arbitrary length. The decryptor learns M(x) and nothing else. The ciphertext and key sizes achieved by our scheme are optimal – the size of the public parameters is independent of the size of the machine or data being encrypted, the secret key size depends only on the machine size and the ciphertext size depends only on the input size. Our scheme achieves full functional encryption in the “private index model”, namely the entire input x is hidden (as against x being public and a single bit b being hidden). Our single key FE scheme can be compiled with symmetric key encryption to yield reusable garbled DFAs for arbitrary size inputs, that achieves machine and input privacy along with reusability under a strong simulation based definition of security. We generalize this to a functional encryption scheme for Turing machines TMFE which has short public parameters that are independent of the size of the machine or the data being encrypted, short function keys, and input-specific decryption time. However, the ciphertext of our construction is large and depends on the worst case running time of the Turing machine (but not its description size). These provide the first FE schemes that support unbounded length inputs, allow succinct public and function keys and rely on LWE. Our construction relies on a new and arguably natural notion of decomposable functional encryption which may be of independent interest.
Abstract The functional encryption scheme designed using the lattice can realize fine-grained encryption and it can resist quantum attacks. Unfortunately, the sizes of the keys and ciphertexts in cryptographic applications based on learning with errors are large, which makes the algorithm inefficient. Therefore, we construct a functional encryption for inner product predicates scheme by improving the learning with errors scheme of Agrawal et al. [Asiacrypt 2011], and its security relies on the difficulty assumption of ring learning with errors. Our construction can reduce the sizes of the keys and ciphertexts compared with the learning with errors scheme.
Abstract We propose a novel variant of functional encryption which supports ciphertext updates, dubbed ciphertext-updatable functional encryption. Such a feature further broadens the practical applicability of the functional encryption paradigm and allows for fine-grained access control even after a ciphertext is generated. Updating ciphertexts is carried out via so-called update tokens which a dedicated party can use to convert ciphertexts. However, allowing update tokens requires some care for the security definition. Our contribution is threefold: We define our new primitive with a security notion in the indistinguishability setting. Within CUFE, functional decryption keysandciphertexts are labeled with tags such that only if the tags of the decryption key and the ciphertext match, then decryption succeeds. Furthermore, we allow ciphertexts to switch their tags to any other tag via update tokens. Such tokens are generated by the holder of the main secret key and can only be used in the desired direction. We present a generic construction of CUFE for any functionality as well as predicates different from equality testing on tags which relies on the existence of indistinguishability obfuscation (iO). We present a practical construction of CUFE for the inner-product functionality from standard assumptions (i.e., LWE) in the random-oracle model. On the technical level, we build on the recent functional encryption schemes with fine-grained access control and linear operations on encrypted data (Abdalla et al., AC’20) and introduce an additional ciphertext updatability feature. Proving security for such a construction turned out to be non-trivial, particularly when revealing keys for the updated challenge ciphertext is allowed. Overall, such construction enriches the set of known inner-product functional encryption schemes with the additional updatability feature of ciphertexts.