A threshold signature scheme distributes the ability to generate signatures through distributed key generation and signing protocols. A threshold signature scheme should be functionally interchangeable, meaning that a signature produced by a threshold scheme should be verifiable by the same algorithm used for non-threshold signatures. To resist future attacks from quantum adversaries, lattice-based threshold signatures are desirable. However, the performance of existing lattice-based threshold signing protocols is still far from practical. This paper presents the first lattice-basedt-out-of-nthreshold signature scheme with functional interchangeability that has been implemented. To build ant-out-of-naccess structure for arbitraryt≤n, we first present a novelt-out-of-nversion of the SPDZ MPC protocol. For high concrete efficiency, we avoid using the MPC protocol to evaluate hash operations. Moreover, we design an efficient distributed rejection sampling protocol. As a consequence, the online phase of our distributed signing protocol takes only 0.5 seconds in the two-party setting and 7.3 seconds in the 12-party setting according to our implementation. As a byproduct, our scheme also presents a periodic key refreshment mechanism and offers proactive security.
A threshold signature scheme distributes the ability to generate signatures through distributed key generation and signing protocols. A threshold signature scheme should be functionally interchangeable, meaning that a signature produced by a threshold scheme should be verifiable by the same algorithm used for non-threshold signatures. To resist future attacks from quantum adversaries, lattice-based threshold signatures are desirable. However, the performance of existing lattice-based threshold signing protocols is still far from practical. This paper presents the first lattice-basedt-out-of-nthreshold signature scheme with functional interchangeability that has been implemented. To build ant-out-of-naccess structure for arbitraryt≤n, we first present a novelt-out-of-nversion of the SPDZ MPC protocol. For high concrete efficiency, we avoid using the MPC protocol to evaluate hash operations. Moreover, we design an efficient distributed rejection sampling protocol. As a consequence, the online phase of our distributed signing protocol takes only 0.5 seconds in the two-party setting and 7.3 seconds in the 12-party setting according to our implementation. As a byproduct, our scheme also presents a periodic key refreshment mechanism and offers proactive security.
A threshold signature scheme splits the signing key amongℓparties, such that anyt-subset of parties can jointly generate signatures on a given message. Designing concretely efficient post-quantum threshold signatures is a pressing question, as evidenced by NIST's recent call. In this work, we propose, implement, and evaluate a lattice-based threshold signature scheme, Ringtail, which is the first to achieve a combination of desirable properties: (i) The signing protocol consists of only two rounds, where the first round is message-independent and can thus be preprocessed offline. (ii) The scheme is concretely efficient and scalable tot≤1024parties. For 128-bit security andt=1024parties, we achieve 13.4 KB signature size and 10.5 KB of online communication. (iii) The security is based on the standard learning with errors (LWE) assumption in the random oracle model. This improves upon the state-of-the-art (with comparable efficiency) which either has a three-round signing protocol [Eurocrypt'24] or relies on a new non-standard assumption [Crypto'24]. To substantiate the practicality of our scheme, we conduct the first WAN experiment deploying a lattice-based threshold signature, across 8 countries in 5 continents. We observe that an overwhelming majority of the end-to-end latency is consumed by network latency, underscoring the need for round-optimized schemes.
We develop secure threshold protocols for two important operations in lattice cryptography, namely, generating a hard lattice Λ together with a “strong ” trapdoor, and sampling from a discrete Gaussian distribution over a desired coset of Λ using the trapdoor. These are the central operations of many cryptographic schemes: for example, they are exactly the key-generation and signing operations (respectively) for the GPV signature scheme, and they are the public parameter generation and private key extraction operations (respectively) for the GPV IBE. We also provide a protocol for trapdoor delegation, which is used in lattice-based hierarchical IBE schemes. Our work therefore directly transfers all these systems to the threshold setting. Our protocols provide information-theoretic (i.e., statistical) security against adaptive corruptions in the UC framework, and they are private and robust against an optimal number of semi-honest or malicious parties. Our Gaussian sampling protocol is both noninteractive and efficient, assuming either a trusted setup phase (e.g., performed as part of key generation) or a sufficient amount of interactive but offline precomputation, which can be performed before the inputs to the sampling phase are known.
Threshold signature schemes enable a group of users to collaboratively produce digital signatures without revealing any individual share. With the current NIST post-quantum standardization underway, the lack of efficient and practical threshold variants of standardized schemes hinders adoption. We introduce the first threshold signature scheme compatible with the ML-DSA standard (Module-Lattice-based Digital Signature Algorithm), supporting up to 6 parties, while retaining efficient signing. Our work uses advanced short secret sharing techniques and optimized rejection sampling to balance communication and correctness in distributed settings. We implement our construction in Go and benchmark it in local, LAN, and WAN deployments. Results show that our threshold ML-DSA is both practical and compatible with real-world applications such as multi-device cryptocurrency wallets, threshold TLS, and Tor's directory authorities.
Threshold signature schemes distribute the signing process among T parties out of N. They enable a variety of applications and their research is also motivated by a recent NIST call. However, applications are dominated by pre-quantum signatures, which are more efficient but not secure in the post-quantum setting. This paper investigates existing post-quantum signatures, based on a variety of paradigms: lattice problems, one-way (hash) functions, cryptographic group actions, isogenies and multivariate systems. We propose a classification (divided by paradigm) of existing tools that are used to build T-out-of-N schemes from digital signatures. We also include general approaches based on FHE, MPC or ZKP.
Digital signatures and key exchange protocols are the two most important public key cryptographic primitives used in the electronic transmission of data. The goal of key exchange is to preserve the secrecy of the communication, while the goal of digital signatures is to guarantee the authenticity of the exchanged messages. Constructions of digital signature schemes based on classical mathematical assumptions appeared shortly following the invention of public key cryptography in the late 1970s. And just like with key exchange, the most efficient variants are based on number-theoretic problems that are believed to be (sub)-exponentially hard for classical machines, but are solved in polynomial time by Shor’s algorithm on a powerful-enough quantum computer. Also, like for key exchange, the most efficient constructions that we believe to be quantum safe are based on the presumed hardness of lattice problems over polynomial rings. One interesting difference between key exchange and digital signatures is that key exchange appears to inherently require that some mathematical problem be computationally hard. Digital signatures, on the other hand, can be generically constructed from any one-way function [1,2]. So even though they certainly fall into the category of public key primitives based on their usage, their existence requires much weaker assumptions. Additionally, the transformation from a one-way function to a digital signature is not too inefficient. For example, the total parameter size (public key + signature) of the SPHINCS+ scheme [3] is around 40 kB. While these sizes are larger, and signing times considerably longer, than those of signatures based on factoring or discrete log, it is still a usable scheme for many applications. And being only based on symmetric assumptions (e.g. one wayness and collision resistance of cryptographic hash functions), its security is very attractive. In order to be considered an interesting alternative to the above-mentioned signature, a scheme based on a mathematical assumption would need to have significant performance advantages. Schemes based on factoring and the discrete logarithm problem were significantly shorter and faster, and so the generic approach lay dormant for over four decades. The new quantum-safe schemes will need to have similar performance advantages if they are to be used in lieu of this safe approach. Below, we describe two techniques for constructing lattice-based digital signatures with output sizes being just a few kilobytes. On a very high level, lattice-based signature constructions follow the two known approaches for constructing classical signatures. In the first approach, the signer outputs a function f and an image y = f(x) as his public key and keeps x as his secret key. To sign a message μ, he gives a non-interactive zero-knowledge proof that he knows an x satisfying y = f(x), using the message μ to create the ‘challenge’ H(μ) for the proof (where H is a public function that maps μ to something ‘random looking’). If the function f is one way then the verifier should be convinced that the proof could have only been created by the entity who knows x. A classic example of this type of scheme is the Schnorr signature scheme [4] based on the hardness of the discrete logarithm problem. The second approach is to create a function f together with a trapdoor f−1, output f as the public key and keep f−1 as the secret key. A message μ is signed by using the secret trapdoor to create a pre-image x such that f(x) = H(μ). Again, if the function f is one way then only someone in possession of a trapdoor should be able to invert it. An example of such a construction based on a ‘factoring-like’ assumption is the RSA signature scheme [5]. The high-level ideas for lattice-based signatures follow the above blueprints, but the technical details are significantly more involved. The main reason for the complications is the different algebraic structure of the hard one-way function underlying lattice cryptography. While the domain of the function in discrete log and RSA-based one-way functions are groups, the domains in lattice-based signatures are sets that are not closed under any operation—in particular, they are elements in a group that have small norms. This crucial small norm requirement precludes us from using uniformly random masking as in Schnorr signatures or having a trapdoor for a bijective one-way function as in RSA signatures. These barriers have, nevertheless, been overcome and the resulting digital signatures are quite practical. In 2017, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) began a ‘competition’ for a quantum-safe key exchange and digital signatures standard. At the time of this writing, this process is in the third round and there are two lattice-based signatures remaining—each following one of the above high-level designs. The CRYSTALS-Dilithium [6] scheme follows the Schnorr framework, but adds a crucial rejection-sampling step to keep the size of the coefficients small. The FALCON scheme [7] utilizes a randomized trapdoor sampling technique that uses a secret trapdoor for f−1 to produce random pre-images from a particular distribution. Because there is no longer a bijection, it is crucial to also have the property that the distribution of the outputted pre-images does not leak information about the trapdoor. Both schemes are relatively fast and their parameters (public key + signature size) are the shortest of all quantum-safe signature schemes. While both schemes are based on lattices, they have rather different characteristics. FALCON has very short parameters (see Table 1), but entails a rather complicated procedure for signature generation. In particular, it uses (an optimized version of) the GPV sampler [8], which requires floating-point arithmetic with approximately 64 bits of precision. Requiring such high precision means that subtle implementation errors may not get detected even with rigorous testing. Dilithium, on the other hand, has larger parameters but a very simple implementation where all the sampling in the signing is done in a power-of-2 range; it is thus much less prone to implementation errors. It is quite possible that in the future both schemes will be used for different applications. Approximate parameter sizes (in bytes) for the CRYSTALS-Dilithium and FALCON digital signature schemes at approximately 128-bit security levels. Approximate parameter sizes (in bytes) for the CRYSTALS-Dilithium and FALCON digital signature schemes at approximately 128-bit security levels. Conflict of interest statement. None declared.
Multiparty Computation (hereafter MPC) is a technique for allowing a set ofparticipants to run a secure computation with the assurance that the output is (1) correct, and (2) that a malicious party did not learn anything about the inputs of the honest parties besides what it can glean from the output. Impor- tantly much of cryptography is based on the assumption that an honest party has a private and secret input, and if the adversary learns this input the security of the scheme is broken. Then naturally the techniques of MPC can be applied to create threshold protocols for these cryptographic schemes to ensure that the secret inputs are not leaked and moreover that no group of parties smaller than the threshold know the input at all. While we have known how to generically evaluate MPC for any function since the 80s the question of efficiency still drives progress to this day. This thesis looks at two approaches for making secure com- putation more practical to deploy: developing specialized protocols for appli- cations such as distributed key generation and signing with RSA and ECDSA; and improving the state of the art of maliciously secure generic boolean-circuit MPC. We first look at work that produced a distributed key generation protocol for RSA that utilizes a novel candidate sampling mechanism to reduce waste in primality testing. The second work builds a threshold scheme for symmetric cryptographic primitives such as AES and SHA where there is limited algebraic structure to exploit by efficiently converting a generic n-of-n MPC protocol into a threshold t-of-n MPC protocol. Future directions in this thesis are in combin- ing techniques from the prior works to create a blind signature scheme for the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) that requires both alge- braic operations over elliptic curves and additionally symmetric evaluations of the SHA2 hash function.--Author's abstract