Abstract. Most lattice-based cryptographic schemes are built upon the assumed hardness of the Short Integer Solution (SIS) and Learning With Errors (LWE) problems. Their efficiencies can be drastically improved by switching the hardness assumptions to the more compact Ring-SIS and Ring-LWE problems. However, this change of hardness assumptions comes along with a possible security weakening: SIS and LWE are known to be at least as hard as standard (worst-case) problems on euclidean lattices, whereas Ring-SIS and Ring-LWE are only known to be as hard as their restrictions to special classes of ideal lattices, corresponding to ideals of some polynomial rings. In this work, we define the Module-SIS and Module-LWE problems, which bridge SIS with Ring-SIS, and LWE with Ring-LWE, respectively. We prove that these average-case problems are at least as hard as standard lattice problems restricted to module lattices (which themselves generalize arbitrary and ideal lattices). As these new problems enlarge the toolbox of the lattice-based cryptographer, they could prove useful for designing new schemes. Importantly, the worst-case to average-case reductions for the module problems are (qualitatively) sharp, in the sense that there exist converse reductions. This property is not known to hold in the context of Ring-SIS/Ring-LWE: Ideal lattice problems could reveal easy without impacting the hardness of Ring-SIS/Ring-LWE. 1
Abstract. Most lattice-based cryptographic schemes are built upon the assumed hardness of the Short Integer Solution (SIS) and Learning With Errors (LWE) problems. Their efficiencies can be drastically improved by switching the hardness assumptions to the more compact Ring-SIS and Ring-LWE problems. However, this change of hardness assumptions comes along with a possible security weakening: SIS and LWE are known to be at least as hard as standard (worst-case) problems on euclidean lattices, whereas Ring-SIS and Ring-LWE are only known to be as hard as their restrictions to special classes of ideal lattices, corresponding to ideals of some polynomial rings. In this work, we define the Module-SIS and Module-LWE problems, which bridge SIS with Ring-SIS, and LWE with Ring-LWE, respectively. We prove that these average-case problems are at least as hard as standard lattice problems restricted to module lattices (which themselves generalize arbitrary and ideal lattices). As these new problems enlarge the toolbox of the lattice-based cryptographer, they could prove useful for designing new schemes. Importantly, the worst-case to average-case reductions for the module problems are (qualitatively) sharp, in the sense that there exist converse reductions. This property is not known to hold in the context of Ring-SIS/Ring-LWE: Ideal lattice problems could reveal easy without impacting the hardness of Ring-SIS/Ring-LWE. 1
Abstract. The decision Learning With Errors problem has proven an extremely flexible foundation for devising provably secure cryptographic primitives. LWE can be expressed in terms of linear algebra over Z/qZ. This modulus q is the subject of study of the present work. When q is prime and small, or when it is exponential and composite with small factors, LWE is known to be at least as hard as standard worst-case problems over euclidean lattices (sometimes using quantum reductions). The Ring Learning With Errors problem is a structured variant of LWE allowing for more compact keys and more efficient primitives. It is known to be at least as hard as standard worst-case problems restricted to so-called ideal lattices, but under even more restrictive arithmetic conditions on q. In this work, we prove that the arithmetic form of the modulus q is irrelevant to the computational hardness of LWE and RLWE. More precisely, we show that these problems are at least as hard as standard worst-case problems on lattices, under the unique condition that q is of polynomial bit-size. This result is most useful for adapting LWE-based cryptographic constructions to the RLWE setting. Among others, this allows us to derive the first Identity-Based Encryption scheme of quasi-optimal performance proven secure under standard worst-case lattice assumptions, in the standard model. Other applications include authentication, functional encryption and traitor tracing.
We present a structured security and performance analysis of modern post-quantum latticebased constructions, emphasizing module lattices and their core hardness assumptions: ModuleLearning With Errors (Module-LWE) and Module Short Integer Solution (Module-SIS). Weoutline the reductionist security story from worst-case lattice problems to average-case ModuleLWE, describe the role of Gaussian measures and smoothing, and provide a reproducible experimental workflow for estimating attack costs using standard lattice estimators. We also discuss the gap between asymptotic hardness and concrete parameter selection, and we provide plots that summarize scaling trends for reviewer-facing evaluation
Lattice-based cryptography is a branch of cryptography exploiting the presumed hardness of some well-known problems on lattices. Its main advantages are its simplicity, efficiency, and apparent security against quantum computers. The principle of the security proofs in lattice-based cryptography is to show that attacking a given scheme is at least as hard as solving a particular problem, as the Learning with Errors problem (LWE) or the Small Integer Solution problem (SIS). Then, by showing that those two problems are at least as hard to solve than a hard problem on lattices, presumed polynomial time intractable, we conclude that the constructed scheme is secure.In this thesis, we improve the foundation of the security proofs and build new cryptographic schemes. We study the hardness of the SIS and LWE problems, and of some of their variants on integer rings of cyclotomic fields and on modules on those rings. We show that there is a classical hardness proof for the LWE problem (Regev's prior reduction was quantum), and that the module variants of SIS and LWE are also hard to solve. We also give two new lattice-based group signature schemes, with security based on SIS and LWE. One is the first lattice-based group signature with logarithmic signature size in the number of users. And the other construction allows another functionality, verifier-local revocation. Finally, we improve the size of some parameters in the work on cryptographic multilinear maps of Garg, Gentry and Halevi in 2013.
Lattice-based cryptography is the use of conjectured hard problems on point lattices in ℝn as the foundation for secure cryptographic systems. Attractive features of lattice cryptography include apparent resistance to quantum attacks (in contrast with most number-theoretic cryptography), high asymptotic efficiency and parallelism, security under worst-case intractability assumptions, and solutions to long-standing open problems in cryptography. This work surveys most of the major developments in lattice cryptography over the past ten years. The main focus is on the foundational short integer solution (SIS) and learning with errors (LWE) problems (and their more efficient ring-based variants), their provable hardness assuming the worst-case intractability of standard lattice problems, and their many cryptographic applications.
In certain designs and applications of practical lattice-based cryptography, the use of a specialized variant of LWE problems, where the public matrix is sampled from a non-uniform distribution, is required to establish the security of the corresponding cryptographic schemes. Recently, the formal definition of LWE problems with semi-uniform seeds was introduced by the community, in which the hardness of Euclidean, ideal, and module lattice-based LWE problems with semi-uniform seeds was proved through reduction approach similar to those employed in the hardness proofs of entropic LWE problems. However, known reduction introduces significant losses in the Gaussian error parameters and lattice dimensions. Moreover, additional non-standard assumptions are required to demonstrate the hardness of LWE problems with semi-uniform seeds over rings. In this paper, a tighter reduction is proposed for LWE problems with semi-uniform seeds by incorporating modified techniques from the hardness proofs of Hint-LWE problems. The proposed reduction is unaffected by the algebraic structure of the underlying problems and can be uniformly applied to Euclidean, ideal, and module lattice-based LWE problems with semi-uniform seeds. The hardness of these LWE problems can be established based on standard LWE assumptions without the need for any additional non-standard assumption. Furthermore, the dimension of corresponding LWE problems remains unchanged, and the reduction introduces only minimal losses in Gaussian error parameters.
The “learning with errors ” (LWE) problem is to distinguish random linear equations, which have been perturbed by a small amount of noise, from truly uniform ones. The problem has been shown to be as hard as worst-case lattice problems, and in recent years it has served as the foundation for a plethora of cryptographic applications. Unfortunately, these applications are rather inefficient due to an inherent quadratic overhead in the use of LWE. A main open question was whether LWE and its applications could be made truly efficient by exploiting extra algebraic structure, as was done for lattice-based hash functions (and related primitives). We resolve this question in the affirmative by introducing an algebraic variant of LWE called ring-LWE, and proving that it too enjoys very strong hardness guarantees. Specifically, we show that the ring-LWE distribution is pseudorandom, assuming that worst-case problems on ideal lattices are hard for polynomial-time quantum algorithms. Applications include the first truly practical lattice-based public-key cryptosystem with an efficient security reduction; moreover, many of the other applications of LWE can be made much more efficient through the use of ring-LWE. 1