In this thesis, we initiate the study of cryptographic protocols where the identity, or other credentials and inputs, of a party are derived from its geographic location.
We start by considering the central task in this setting, i.e., securely verifying the position of a device. Despite much work in this area, we show that in the Vanilla (or standard) model, this above task (i.e., of secure positioning) is impossible to achieve, even if we assume that the adversary is computationally bounded. In light of the above impossibility result, we then turn to Dziembowski's Bounded Retrieval Model (a variant of Maurer's Bounded Storage Model) and formalize and construct information theoretically secure protocols for two fundamental tasks: Secure Positioning; and Position-Based Key Exchange.
We then show that these tasks are in fact universal in this setting—we show how we can use them to realize Secure Multi-Party Computation.
The main contribution of this thesis is threefold: to place the problem of secure positioning on a sound theoretical footing; to prove a strong impossibility result that simultaneously shows the insecurity of previous attempts at the problem; and to present positive results showing that the bounded-retrieval framework is a fruitful one to study the foundations of position-based cryptography.
This thesis is based on joint works with Vipul Goyal, Ryan Moriarty, and Rafail Ostrovsky.
In this thesis, we initiate the study of cryptographic protocols where the identity, or other credentials and inputs, of a party are derived from its geographic location.
We start by considering the central task in this setting, i.e., securely verifying the position of a device. Despite much work in this area, we show that in the Vanilla (or standard) model, this above task (i.e., of secure positioning) is impossible to achieve, even if we assume that the adversary is computationally bounded. In light of the above impossibility result, we then turn to Dziembowski's Bounded Retrieval Model (a variant of Maurer's Bounded Storage Model) and formalize and construct information theoretically secure protocols for two fundamental tasks: Secure Positioning; and Position-Based Key Exchange.
We then show that these tasks are in fact universal in this setting—we show how we can use them to realize Secure Multi-Party Computation.
The main contribution of this thesis is threefold: to place the problem of secure positioning on a sound theoretical footing; to prove a strong impossibility result that simultaneously shows the insecurity of previous attempts at the problem; and to present positive results showing that the bounded-retrieval framework is a fruitful one to study the foundations of position-based cryptography.
This thesis is based on joint works with Vipul Goyal, Ryan Moriarty, and Rafail Ostrovsky.
In this paper, we initiate the theoretical study of cryptographic protocols where the identity, or other credentials and inputs, of a party are derived from its geographic location. We start by considering the central task in this setting, i.e., securely verifying the position of a device. Despite much work in this area, we show that in the vanilla (or standard) model, the above task (i.e., of secure positioning) is impossible to achieve, even if we assume that the adversary is computationally bounded. In light of the above impossibility result, we then turn to Dziembowski's bounded retrieval model (a variant of Maurer's bounded storage model) and formalize and construct information theoretically secure protocols for two fundamental tasks: secure positioning and position-based key exchange. We then show that these tasks are in fact universal in this setting---we show how we can use them to realize secure multiparty computation. Our main contribution in this paper is threefold: to place the problem of secure positioning on a sound theoretical footing; to prove a strong impossibility result that simultaneously shows the insecurity of previous attempts at the problem; and to present positive results showing that the bounded-retrieval framework is a fruitful one to study the foundations of position-based cryptography.
In this work, we study position-based cryptography in the quantum setting. The aim is to use the geographical position of a party as its only credential. On the negative side, we show that if adversaries are allowed to share an arbitrarily large entangled quantum state, the task of secure position-verification is impossible. To this end, we prove the following very general result. Assume that Alice and Bob hold respectively subsystems A and B of a (possibly) unknown quantum state ∣ψ⟩∈HA⊗HB. Their goal is to calculate and share a new state ∣φ⟩=U∣ψ⟩, where U is a fixed unitary operation. The question that we ask is how many rounds of mutual communication are needed. It is easy to achieve such a task using two rounds of classical communication, whereas, in general, it is impossible with no communication at all. Surprisingly, in case Alice and Bob share enough entanglement to start with and we allow an arbitrarily small failure probability, we show that the same task can be done using a single round of classical communication in which Alice and Bob exchange two classical messages. Actually, we prove that a relaxed version of the task can be done with no communication at all, where the task is to compute instead a state ∣φ′⟩ that coincides with ∣φ⟩=U∣ψ⟩ up to local operations on A and on B, which are determined by classical information held by Alice and Bob. The one-round scheme for the original task then follows as a simple corollary. We also show that these results generalize to more players. As a consequence, we show a generic attack that breaks any position-verification scheme. On the positive side, we show that if adversaries do not share any entangled quantum state but can compute arbitrary quantum operations, secure position-verification is achievable. Jointly, these results suggest the interesting question whether secure position-verification is possible in case of a bounded amount of entanglement. Our positive result can be interpreted as resolving this question in the simplest case, where the bound is set to zero. In models where secure position-verification is achievable, it has a number of interesting applications. For example, it enables secure communication over an insecure channel without having any preshared key, with the guarantee that only a party at a specific location can learn the content of the conversation. More generally, we show that in settings where secure position-verification is achievable, other position-based cryptographic schemes are possible as well, such as secure position-based authentication and position-based key agreement.
In our daily lives, people or devices frequently need to learn their location for many reasons as some services depend on the absolute location or the proximity. The outcomes of positioning systems can have critical effects e.g., on military, emergency. Thus, the security of these systems is quite important. In this thesis, we concentrate on many security aspects of position in cryptography. The first part of this thesis focuses on the theory of distance bounding. A distance bounding protocol is a two-party authentication protocol between a prover and a verifier which considers the distance of the prover as a part of his/her credential. It aims to defeat threats by malicious provers who try to convince that they are closer to the verifier or adversaries which seek to impersonate a far-away prover. In this direction, we first study the optimal security bounds that a distance bounding protocol can achieve. We consider the optimal security bounds when we add some random delays in the distance computation and let the prover involve distance computation. Then, we focus on solving the efficiency problem of public-key distance bounding because the public-key cryptography requires much more computations than the symmetric-key cryptography. We construct two generic protocols (one without privacy, one with) which require fewer computations on the prover side compared to the existing protocols while keeping the highest security level. Then, we describe a new security model involving a tamper-resistant hardware. This model is called the secure hardware model (SHM). We define an all-in-one security model which covers all the threats of distance bounding and an appropriate privacy notion for SHM. The second part of this thesis is to fill the gap between the distance bounding and its real-world applications. We first consider contactless access control. We define an integrated security and privacy model for access control using distance bounding (DB) to defeat relay attacks. We show how a secure DB protocol can be converted to a secure contactless access control protocol. Regarding privacy (i.e., keeping anonymity in a strong sense to an active adversary), we show that the conversion does not always preserve privacy, but it is possible to study it on a case by case basis. Then, we consider contactless payment systems. We design an adversarial model and define formally the contactless payment security against malicious cards and malicious terminals. Accordingly, we design a contactless payment protocol and show its security in our security model. The last part of this thesis focuses on positioning. We consider two problems related to positioning systems: localization and proof of location. In localization, a user aims to find its position by using a wireless network. In proof of location, a user wants to prove his/her position e.g., to have access to a system or authorize itself. We first formally define the problem of localization and construct a formal security model. We describe algorithms and protocols for localization which are secure in our model. Proof of location has been considered formally by Chandran et al. in CRYPTO 2009 and it was proved that achieving security is not possible in the vanilla model. By integrating the localization and the secure hardware model, we obtain a model where we can achieve proof of location.
The notion of secure computation is central to cryptography. Introduced in the seminal works of Yao [FOCS'82, FOCS'86] and Goldreich, Micali and Wigderson [STOC'87], secure multiparty computation allows a group of (mutually) distrustful parties to jointly compute any functionality over their individual private inputs in such a manner that the honest parties obtain the correct outputs and no group of malicious parties learn anything beyond their inputs and the prescribed outputs. General feasibility results for secure computation were given by Yao [FOCS'86] and Goldreich et al. [STOC'87] more than two decades ago. Subsequent to these works, designing secure computation protocols that can tolerate more powerful adversaries and satisfy stronger notions of security has been a very active area of research. In this dissertation, we study two such new frontiers in the area of secure computation.
In the first part of this dissertation, we initiate a study of designing leakage-resilient interactive protocols. Specifically, we consider the scenario where an adversary, in addition to corrupting a subset of parties, can leak (potentially via physical attacks) arbitrary information from the secret state of any honest party. This is in contrast to the standard notion of secure computation where it is assumed that the adversary only has black-box'' access to the honest parties. In particular, we formalize a meaningful definition of leakage-resilient zero knowledge proof systems and provide constructions that satisfy our notion. We also discuss various applications of our results.
The second part of this dissertation concerns with the general question of whether it is possible to securely run cryptographic protocols over an insecure network environment such as the Internet. It is well-known that the standard notion of secure computation is only relevant to the stand-alone setting where a single protocol is being executed in isolation; as such it does not guarantee security when multiple protocol sessions may be executed concurrently under the control of an adversary who is present across all sessions. We consider the open problem of constructing secure password-based authenticated key exchange protocols in such a setting in the plain model (i.e., without assuming any trusted infrastructure or random oracles). We give the first construction of such a protocol based on standard cryptographic assumptions. Our results are in fact much more general, and extend to other functionalities w.r.t. a (necessarily) weakened notion of concurrently secure computation.
The results presented in this dissertation stem from two papers which are joint works with Sanjam Garg and Amit Sahai, and with Vipul Goyal and Rafail Ostrovsky, respectively.
Position based cryptography (PBC), proposed in the seminal work of Chandran, Goyal, Moriarty, and Ostrovsky (SIAM J. Computing, 2014), aims at constructing cryptographic schemes in which the identity of the user is his geographic position. Chandran et al. construct PBC schemes for secure positioning and position-based key agreement in the bounded-storage model (Maurer, J. Cryptology, 1992). Apart from bounded memory, their security proofs need a strong additional restriction on the power of the adversary: he cannot compute joint functions of his inputs. Removing this assumption is left as an open problem.
Chandran, et al. introduce the direction of position based cryptography at CRYPTO 2009. In position based cryptography, the position of a party is used to be its unique “credential” in order to realize the cryptographic tasks, such as position based encryption, position based signature, position based key exchange and so on. Position based key exchange, as a basic primitive in position based cryptography, can be used to establish a shared key based on the position of the participant. To begin with, this paper presents the notions of the prover-to-verifier mode and the prover-to-prover mode for position based key exchange. In the prover-to-verifier mode, a secret key can be shared between a prover and the verifiers according to the position of the prover. While in the prover-to-prover mode, two provers located at the valid positions can negotiate a shared key with the help of the verifiers and any other party whose position is illegal cannot obtain the shared key. At the same time, this paper formalizes two security definitions against colluding adversaries: position based prover-to-verifier key exchange and position based prover-to-prover key exchange. Then, this paper introduces the bounded retrieval model and the implementations of position based key exchange in two modes based on the bounded retrieval model. Finally, this paper discusses the position based key exchange protocols in two modes from both security and performance perspectives.