We study the problem of secure two-party computation in the presence of a trusted setup. If there is an unconditionally UC-secure protocol for f that makes use of calls to an ideal g, then we say that f reduces to g (and write \(f \sqsubseteq g\)). Some g are complete in the sense that all functions reduce to g. However, almost nothing is known about the power of an incomplete g in this setting. We shed light on this gap by showing a characterization of \(f \sqsubseteq g\) for incomplete g.
We study the problem of secure two-party computation in the presence of a trusted setup. If there is an unconditionally UC-secure protocol for f that makes use of calls to an ideal g, then we say that f reduces to g (and write (f \sqsubseteq g)). Some g are complete in the sense that all functions reduce to g. However, almost nothing is known about the power of an incomplete g in this setting. We shed light on this gap by showing a characterization of (f \sqsubseteq g) for incomplete g.
Secure multi-party computation is a conceptual framework in which distrusting parties engage in a protocol to securely perform a computational task. Depending on the precise model of security, different sets of tasks admit secure protocols. We take a complexity-theoretic approach to studying the inherent difficulty of securely realizing tasks in various standard security models. * We give the first alternate characterization of secure realizability in the framework of universally composable (UC) security. This is the first characterization in any model to consider completely arbitrary computational tasks and completely arbitrary communication channels. * The most long-standing class of computational tasks studied are those in which two parties evaluate a deterministic function. For these tasks, we give the first complete, combinatorial characterizations of secure realizability in the passive, standalone, and universally composable security models, against computationally unbounded adversaries. * Say that a task G has ``as much cryptographic complexity'' as another task F if there is a secure protocol for F that uses access to a secure implementation of G. We show that there is an infinite hierarchy of tasks with strictly increasing cryptographic complexities, with respect to computationally unbounded security. We also show that there exist tasks whose cryptographic complexities are incomparable. * In contrast, we show that under a standard cryptographic assumption, there exist only two distinct levels of cryptographic complexity with respect to polynomial-time security. Every task either has a trivial protocol using plain communication channels, or is complete (i.e., given access to a secure implementation of this task, there are secure protocols for all other tasks). This is the first result to derive a characterization of completeness for a class of arbitrary interactive tasks. In light of these characterizations, the only tasks which are securely realizable in the demanding framework of universal composition are those related to secure communication. Indeed, the framework has been used to define the security of encryption schemes, which has allowed for modular design and analysis of protocols. We consider a similar approach for homomorphic encryption schemes. A homomorphic scheme is one in which anyone can obtain an encryption of f(m_1, ..., m_n), given only the encryptions of unknown messages m_1, ..., m_n, for a specific set of functions f. * We give a construction of a homomorphic encryption scheme in which the allowed homomorphic operation is as full-featured as possible --- namely, one can derive a correctly-distributed encryption of f(m) given an encryption of unknown message m, for some functions f --- yet it is computationally infeasible to generate a ciphertext that is related to other ciphertexts in any other way. Our contributions involve developing new appropriate security definitions as well as new constructions. * We show that schemes with such powerful security guarantees can be used to build conceptually simple, efficient, UC-secure protocols for verifiable computations on encrypted data. We show protocols for two tasks related to aggregating encrypted data.
We propose a modification to the framework of Universally Composable (UC) security [3]. Our new notion, involves comparing the protocol executions with an ideal execution involving ideal functionalities (just as in UC-security), but allowing the environment and adversary access to some super-polynomial computational power. We argue the meaningfulness of the new notion, which in particular subsumes many of the traditional notions of security. We generalize the Universal Composition theorem of [3] to the new setting. Then under new computational assumptions, we realize secure multi-party computation (for static adversaries) without a common reference string or any other set-up assumptions, in the new framework. This is known to be impossible under the UC framework. 1
It is well-known that most cryptographic tasks do not have universally composable (UC) secure protocols, if no trusted setup is available in the framework. On the other hand, if a task like fair coin-tossing is available as a trusted setup, then all cryptographic tasks have UC-secure protocols. What other trusted setups allow UC-secure protocols for all tasks? More generally, given a particular setup, what tasks have UC-secure protocols?We show that, surprisingly, every trusted setup is either useless (equivalent to having no trusted setup) or all-powerful (allows UC-secure protocols for all tasks). There are no “intermediate” trusted setups in the UC framework. We prove this zero-one law under a natural intractability assumption, and consider the class of deterministic, finite, 2-party functionalities as candidate trusted setups.One important technical contribution in this work is to initiate the comprehensive study of the cryptographic properties of reactive functionalities. We model these functionalities as finite automata and develop an automata-theoretic methodology for classifying and studying their cryptographic properties. Consequently, we completely characterize the reactive behaviors that lead to cryptographic non-triviality. Another contribution of independent interest is to optimize the hardness assumption used by Canetti et al. (STOC 2002) in showing that the common random string functionality is complete (a result independently obtained by Damgård et al. (TCC 2010)).
In symmetric secure function evaluation (SSFE), Alice has an input x, Bob has an input y, and both parties wish to securely compute f(x, y). We show several new results classifying the feasibility of securely implementing these functions in several security settings. Namely, we give new alternate characterizations of the functions that have (statistically) secure protocols against passive and active (standalone), computationally unbounded adversaries. We also show a strict, infinite hierarchy of complexity for SSFE functions with respect to universally composable security against unbounded adversaries. That is, there exists a sequence of functions f1, f2,... such that there exists a UC-secure protocol for fi in the fj-hybrid world if and only if i ≤ j. The main new technical tool that unifies our unrealizability results is a powerful protocol simulation theorem, which may be of independent interest. Essentially, in any adversarial setting (UC, standalone, or passive), f is securely realizable if and only if a very simple (deterministic) “canonical ” protocol for f achieves the desired security. Thus, to show that f is unrealizable, one need simply demonstrate a single attack on a single simple protocol. 1
Most existing work on secure multi-party computation (MPC) ignores a key idiosyncrasy of modern communication networks, that there are a limited number of communication paths between any two nodes, many of which might even be corrupted. The problem becomes particularly acute in the information-theoretic setting, where the lack of trusted setups (and the cryptographic primitives they enable) makes communication over sparse networks more challenging. The work by Garay and Ostrovsky [EUROCRYPT’08] on almost-everywhere MPC (AE-MPC), introduced “best-possible security” properties for MPC over such incomplete networks, where necessarily some of the honest parties may be excluded from the computation. In this work, we provide a universally composable definition of almost-everywhere security , which allows us to automatically and accurately capture the guarantees of AE-MPC (as well as AE-communication, the analogous “best-possible security” version of secure communication) in the Universal Composability (UC) framework of Canetti. Our results offer the first simulation-based treatment of this important but under-investigated problem, along with the first simulation-based proof of AE-MPC. To achieve that goal, we state and prove a general composition theorem, which makes precise the level or “quality” of AE-security that is obtained when a protocol’s hybrids are replaced with almost-everywhere components.
Abstract. The recently proposed universally composable (UC) security framework, for analyzing security of cryptographic protocols, provides very strong security guarantees. In particular, a protocol proven secure in this framework is guaranteed to maintain its security even when deployed in arbitrary multi-party, multi-protocol, multi-execution environments. Protocols for securely carrying out essentially any cryptographic task in a universally composable way exist, both in the case of an honest majority (in the plain model, i.e., without set-up assumptions) and in the case of no honest majority (in the common reference string model). However, in the plain model, little was known for the case of no honest majority and, in particular, for the important special case of two-party protocols. We study the feasibility of universally composable two-party function evaluation in the plain model. Our results show that very few functions can be computed in this model so as to provide the UC security guarantees. Specifically, for the case of deterministic functions, we provide a full characterization of the functions computable in this model. (Essentially, these are the functions that depend on at most one of the parties’ inputs, and furthermore are “efficiently invertible ” in a sense defined within.) For the case of probabilistic functions, we show that the only functions computable in this model are those where one of the parties can essentially uniquely determine the joint output. 1