Card-based cryptographic protocols provide secure multi-party computations using a deck of physical cards. The most important primitive of those protocols is the shuffling operation, and most of the existing protocols rely on uniform cyclic shuffles (such as the random cut and random bisection cut) in which each possible outcome is equally likely and all possible outcomes constitute a cyclic subgroup. However, a couple of protocols with non-uniform and/or non-cyclic shuffles were proposed by Koch, Walzer, and Härtel at Asiacrypt 2015. Compared to the previous protocols, their protocols require fewer cards to securely produce a hidden AND value, although to implement of such unconventional shuffles appearing in their protocols remains an open problem. This paper introduces “pile-shifting scramble,” which can be a secure implementation of those shuffles. To implement such unconventional shuffles, we utilize physical cases that can store piles of cards, such as boxes and envelopes. Therefore, humans are able to perform the shuffles using these everyday objects. Furthermore, we show that a certain class of non-uniform and/or non-cyclic shuffles having two possible outcomes can be implemented by the pile-shifting scramble. This also implies that we can improve upon the known COPY protocol using three card cases so that the number of cases required can be reduced to two.
Card-based cryptographic protocols provide secure multi-party computations using a deck of physical cards. The most important primitive of those protocols is the shuffling operation, and most of the existing protocols rely on uniform cyclic shuffles (such as the random cut and random bisection cut) in which each possible outcome is equally likely and all possible outcomes constitute a cyclic subgroup. However, a couple of protocols with non-uniform and/or non-cyclic shuffles were proposed by Koch, Walzer, and Härtel at Asiacrypt 2015. Compared to the previous protocols, their protocols require fewer cards to securely produce a hidden AND value, although to implement of such unconventional shuffles appearing in their protocols remains an open problem. This paper introduces “pile-shifting scramble,” which can be a secure implementation of those shuffles. To implement such unconventional shuffles, we utilize physical cases that can store piles of cards, such as boxes and envelopes. Therefore, humans are able to perform the shuffles using these everyday objects. Furthermore, we show that a certain class of non-uniform and/or non-cyclic shuffles having two possible outcomes can be implemented by the pile-shifting scramble. This also implies that we can improve upon the known COPY protocol using three card cases so that the number of cases required can be reduced to two.
Card-based cryptographic protocols provide secure multi-party computation using a deck of physical cards. The most important primitive of those protocols is the shuffling operation, and most known protocols rely on uniform shuffles (such as the random cut and random bisection cut) in which each possible outcome is equally likely. However, several protocols with non-uniform shuffles have recently been proposed by Koch et al. Compared to other protocols, their protocols require fewer cards to securely produce a hidden AND value, although implementation of the non-uniform shuffle appearing in their protocols remains an open problem. This paper presents a secure implementation of their non-uniform shuffle. To implement the shuffle, we utilize physical cases that can store piles of cards, such as boxes and envelopes. Therefore, humans are able to perform the non-uniform shuffle using these everyday objects.
Abstract In card-based cryptography, designing AND protocols in committed format is a major research topic. The state-of-the-art AND protocol proposed by Koch, Walzer, and Härtel in ASIACRYPT 2015 uses only four cards, which is the minimum permissible number. The minimality of their protocol relies on somewhat complicated shuffles having non-uniform probabilities of possible outcomes. Restricting the allowed shuffles to uniform closed ones entails that, to the best of our knowledge, six cards are sufficient: the six-card AND protocol proposed by Mizuki and Sone in 2009 utilizes the random bisection cut, which is a uniform and cyclic (and hence, closed) shuffle. Thus, a question has arisen: “Can we improve upon this six-card protocol using only uniform closed shuffles?” In other words, the existence or otherwise of a five-card AND protocol in committed format using only uniform closed shuffles has been one of the most important open questions in this field. In this paper, we answer the question affirmatively by designing five-card committed-format AND protocols using only uniform cyclic shuffles. The shuffles that our protocols use are the random cut and random bisection cut, both of which are uniform cyclic shuffles and can be easily implemented by humans.
In card-based cryptography, designing AND protocols in committed format is a major topic of research. The state-of-the-art AND protocol proposed by Koch, Walzer, and Härtel in ASIACRYPT 2015 uses only four cards, which is the minimum permissible number. Their protocol»s minimality relies on somewhat complicated shuffles having non-uniform probabilities of possible outcomes. Restricting the allowed shuffles to "practical»» ones, namely uniform closed shuffles, to our knowledge, six cards are sufficient: The six-card AND protocol proposed by Mizuki and Sone in 2009 utilizes the random bisection cut, which is a uniform and cyclic (and hence, closed) shuffle. Thus, a question has arisen: Can we improve upon this six-card protocol using only practical shuffles? In other words, whether there exists a five-card AND protocol in committed format using only uniform closed shuffles has been one of the most important open questions in this field. In this paper, we answer the question affirmatively by designing a five-card committed-format AND protocol using only practical shuffles. The shuffles that our protocol uses are random cut and random bisection cut, both of which are uniform cyclic shuffles and can be easily implemented by humans.
Card-based cryptography is a research field for realizing secure computation using physical cards. In card-based protocols, the efficiency of a protocol is mainly measured by the number of cards and the number of shuffles. Shinagawa and Nuida proposed a batching technique, which is a technique for reducing the number of pile-scramble shuffles (PSS) by combining multiple PSSs into a single PSS. In this paper, we propose three new methods for the batching technique. The first method uses a new shuffle called a generalized PSS; unlike a PSS, this allows the number of cards in each pile to be uneven. The second method uses a shuffle called a branching PSS, which is a PSS for a sequence including face-up cards. The third method uses a shuffle called a branching generalized PSS, which is a generalized PSS for a sequence including face-up cards. Our methods are efficient in terms of the number of cards and shuffles compared to the existing batching technique. As applications, we use our methods to reduce the number of shuffles for AND protocols and XOR protocols.
In card-based cryptography, a commitment to a Boolean value is usually represented by two face-down cards of different colors or numbers, whose order specifies the one-bit value (namely, 0 or 1). One of the most important primitives in card-based cryptography is a "copy protocol," which is supposed to make two identical copies of a given commitment. In the literature, there are several copy protocols, which can be categorized by kinds of shuffles they use; this paper focuses on those using only the so-called random cut, which is the simplest shuffle, and we propose two copy protocols that are more efficient than the existing ones. Specifically, we first work on a standard deck of cards and design a six-card copy protocol using three random cuts (on average). Since the previous protocol needs 5.5 random cuts, our protocol improves upon it. Next, we shift our attention to the case of a two-colored deck of cards, and construct a six-card copy protocol using three random cuts (on average). Because the previous protocol requires eight cards, our protocol uses two cards fewer than the previous one (although it uses one more shuffle). In addition, going back to the standard-deck setting, we provide a four-card XOR protocol using only one random cut for the first time.
Secure computation is a cryptographic primitive that enables mutually distrustful parties to jointly realize a possibly randomized functionality in a secure manner. Card-based secure computation studies the problem of implementing secure computation protocols visually by using physical cards, to help non-experts understand their mechanisms. Although many card-based secure computation protocols have been proposed, most of them focus on deterministic functionalities and only a few protocols for randomized functionalities are tailored to specific applications. In this work, we initiate the study of card-based protocols for generating uniformly random bits, which is the most fundamental randomized functionality in secure computation. We present four constructions of such protocols differing in the types of shuffles they use. We also show a lower-bound result that the number of shuffles required for protocols using complete shuffles must be at least the number of output bits. Furthermore, we demonstrate that our protocols for generating uniformly random bits can be extended to those for generating possibly non-uniform random numbers, when combined with existing card-based protocols for computing deterministic functions.