We propose the notion of succinct oblivious tensor evaluation (OTE), where two parties compute an additive secret sharing of a tensor product of two vectors x λ- y, exchanging two simultaneous messages. Crucially, the size of both messages and of the CRS is independent of the dimension of x. We present a construction of OTE with optimal complexity from the standard learning with errors (LWE) problem. Then we show how this new technical tool enables a host of cryptographic primitives, all with security reducible to LWE, such as: (a) Adaptively secure laconic function evaluation for depth-D functions f:{0, 1}m→{0, 1}λ.," with communication m+λ.,"+D· poly(λ); (b) A trapdoor hash function for all functions; (c) An (optimally) succinct homomorphic secret sharing for all functions; (d) A rate-1/2 laconic oblivious transfer for batch messages, which is best possible. In particular, we obtain the first laconic function evaluation scheme that is adaptively secure from the standard LWE assumption, improving upon Quach, Wee, and Wichs (FOCS 2018). As a key technical ingredient, we introduce a new notion of adaptive lattice encodings, which may be of independent interest.
We propose the notion of succinct oblivious tensor evaluation (OTE), where two parties compute an additive secret sharing of a tensor product of two vectors x λ- y, exchanging two simultaneous messages. Crucially, the size of both messages and of the CRS is independent of the dimension of x. We present a construction of OTE with optimal complexity from the standard learning with errors (LWE) problem. Then we show how this new technical tool enables a host of cryptographic primitives, all with security reducible to LWE, such as: (a) Adaptively secure laconic function evaluation for depth-D functions f:{0, 1}m→{0, 1}λ.," with communication m+λ.,"+D· poly(λ); (b) A trapdoor hash function for all functions; (c) An (optimally) succinct homomorphic secret sharing for all functions; (d) A rate-1/2 laconic oblivious transfer for batch messages, which is best possible. In particular, we obtain the first laconic function evaluation scheme that is adaptively secure from the standard LWE assumption, improving upon Quach, Wee, and Wichs (FOCS 2018). As a key technical ingredient, we introduce a new notion of adaptive lattice encodings, which may be of independent interest.
We introduce a new cryptographic primitive called laconic function evaluation (LFE). Using LFE, Alice can compress a large circuit f into a small digest. Bob can encrypt some data x under this digest in a way that enables Alice to recover f(x) without learning anything else about Bob's data. For the scheme to be laconic, we require that the size of the digest, the run-time of the encryption algorithm and the size of the ciphertext should all be small, much smaller than the circuit-size of f. We construct an LFE scheme for general circuits under the learning with errors (LWE) assumption, where the above parameters only grow polynomially with the depth but not the size of the circuit. We then use LFE to construct secure 2-party and multi-party computation (2PC, MPC) protocols with novel properties: We construct a 2-round 2PC protocol between Alice and Bob with respective inputs xA, xBin which Alice learns the output f(xA, xB) in the second round. This is the first such protocol which is “Bob-optimized”, meaning that Alice does all the work while Bob's computation and the total communication of the protocol are smaller than the size of the circuit f or even Alice's input xA. In contrast, prior solutions based on fully homomorphic encryption are “Alice-optimized”. . We construct an MPC protocol, which allows N parties to securely evaluate a function f(x1, ..., xN) over their respective inputs, where the total amount of computation performed by the parties during the protocol execution is smaller than that of evaluating the function itself! Each party has to individually pre-process the circuit f before the protocol starts and post-process the protocol transcript to recover the output after the protocol ends, and the cost of these steps is larger than the circuit size. However, this gives the first MPC where the computation performed by each party during the actual protocol execution, from the time the first protocol message is sent until the last protocol message is received, is smaller than the circuit size.
Succinct argument systems are of central importance to modern crytpography, enabling the efficient verification of computational claims. In the classical setting, Kilian (STOC 92) established that any probabilistically checkable proof for NP can be transformed into a succinct argument system for NP using only collision-resistant hash functions. In the quantum setting, recent works have established the feasibility of (classically-verifiable) succinct arguments for QMA, capturing statements that require *quantum* proofs. However, known constructions all rely on the highly structured assumption of learning with errors (LWE), which stands in stark contrast with the unstructured assumptions that suffice for NP.
In this work, we develop a new framework that broadens the cryptographic foundations of succinct arguments for QMA. We assume the existence of (i) an oblivious state preparation (OSP) protocol, which in turn can be constructed from *plain* trapdoor claw-free functions, and (ii) collapsing hash functions, the quantum analogue of collision-resistance. In particular, we obtain the first succinct, classically-verifiable argument system for QMA which does not rely on the hardness of LWE.
Our construction proceeds in two steps. First, we design a *round-efficient* classically-verifiable argument system for QMA based only on the assumption of OSP. Second, we introduce a *generalized communication compression compiler*, which, assuming collapsing hash functions, transforms any T-round interactive protocol into one in which the communication size is bounded by $T \cdot \poly(\secp)$ for some fixed $\poly$ independent of the original size of each message. Our compiler extends a quantum rigidity-based communication compression technique of Zhang (QCrypt 25), and may be of independent interest.
An oblivious linear function evaluation protocol, or OLE, is a two-party protocol for the function f ( x ) = a x + b, where a sender inputs the field elements a, b, and a receiver inputs x and learns f ( x ). OLE can be used to build secret-shared multiplication, and is an essential component of many secure computation applications including general-purpose multi-party computation, private set intersection and more. In this work, we present several efficient OLE protocols from the ring learning with errors (RLWE) assumption. Technically, we build two new passively secure protocols, which build upon recent advances in homomorphic secret sharing from (R)LWE (Boyle et al. in: EUROCRYPT 2019, Part II (2019) 3–33 Springer), with optimizations tailored to the setting of OLE. We upgrade these to active security using efficient amortized zero-knowledge techniques for lattice relations (Baum et al. in: CRYPTO 2018, Part II (2018) 669–699 Springer), and design new variants of zero-knowledge arguments that are necessary for some of our constructions. Our protocols offer several advantages over existing constructions. Firstly, they have the lowest communication complexity amongst previous, practical protocols from RLWE and other assumptions; secondly, they are conceptually very simple, and have just one round of interaction for the case of OLE where b is randomly chosen. We demonstrate this with an implementation of one of our passively secure protocols, which can perform more than 1 million OLEs per second over the ring Z m , for a 120-bit modulus m, on standard hardware.
Laconic cryptography focuses on designing two-message protocols that allow secure computation over large datasets while minimizing communication costs. While laconic cryptography protocols achieve asymptotically optimal communication complexity for many tasks, their concrete efficiency is prohibitively expensive, due to heavy use of public-key techniques or non-black-box cryptographic primitives. In this work, we initiate the study of \emph{laconic cryptography with preprocessing}, introducing a model that includes an offline phase to generate database-dependent correlations, which are then used in a lightweight online phase. These correlations are conceptually simple, relying on linear-algebraic techniques. This enables us to develop a protocol for private laconic vector oblivious linear evaluation (plvOLE). In such a protocol, the receiver holds a large database DB, and the sender has two messages v and w along with an index i. The receiver learns the value v⋅DBi+w without revealing any other information. Our protocol, which draws from ideas developed in the context of private information retrieval with preprocessing, serves as the backbone for two applications of interest: laconic private set intersection (lPSI) for large universes and laconic function evaluation for RAM programs (RAM-LFE). Based on our plvOLE protocol, we provide efficient instantiations of these two primitives in the preprocessing model.
Secure two-party computation considers the problem of two parties computing a joint function of their private inputs without revealing anything beyond the output of the computation. In this work, we take the first steps towards understanding the setting in which the two parties want to evaluate a joint quantum functionality while using only a classical channel between them. Our first result indicates that it is in general impossible to realize a two-party quantum functionality against malicious adversaries with black-box simulation, relying only on classical channels. The negative result stems from reducing the existence of a black-box simulator to an extractor for classical proof of quantum knowledge, which in turn leads to violation of the quantum no-cloning. Next, we introduce the notion of oblivious quantum function evaluation (OQFE). An OQFE is a two-party quantum cryptographic primitive with one fully classical party (Alice) whose input is (a classical description of a) quantum unitary, U, and a quantum party (Bob) whose input is a quantum state, ψ. In particular, Alice receives a classical output corresponding to the measurement of U(ψ) while Bob receives no output. In OQFE, Bob remains oblivious to Alice's input, while Alice learns nothing about ψ more than what can be learned from the output. We present two constructions, one secure against semi-honest parties and the other against malicious parties. Due to the no-go result mentioned above, we consider what is arguably the best possible notion obtainable in our model concerning malicious adversaries: one-sided simulation security. Our protocol relies on the assumption of injective homomorphic trapdoor OWFs, which in turn rely on the LWE problem. As a result, we put forward a first, simple and modular, construction of one-sided quantum two-party computation and quantum oblivious transfer over classical networks.
In this dissertation, we address several issues that arise in protecting communication between parties, as well as in the area of secure function evaluation. Intuitively, the notion of secure function evaluation is clear and natural: several parties wish to compute some function of their inputs without revealing any information about the inputs, other than what is implied by the value of the function. Research included in this dissertation follows three main directions, briefly described below. The first direction (Chapters 3 and 4) is the design of efficient protocols for concrete functions of interest. Specifically, we present new, more efficient protocols for securely computing the Greater Than (GT) function on the inputs of two parties. Secure evaluation of GT is frequently needed in financial transactions. We introduce new primitives, which are convenient building blocks for more complex tasks, and generalize our GT solutions to satisfy them. Based on this, we construct secure auction protocols, protocols for determining whether an integer lies on an interval, and others. The second direction (Chapter 5) is a fundamental approach to secure evaluation of any function, given as a boolean circuit. We present a very efficient information-theoretic (IT) reduction from the problem of secure evaluation of a polysize formula (or, equivalently, a log-depth boolean circuit) to Oblivious Transfer (a fundamental well-researched cryptographic primitive). Our cost of evaluating each gate of the formula is quadratic in its depth, while in previous reductions it was exponential. Our constructions imply efficient one-round protocols for evaluation of polysize formulas on the players' inputs. We extend our solutions to evaluation of polysize circuits, at the cost of having only computational security. The third direction (Chapter 6) is research on key exchange (KE). In contrast with the previous two directions, here the goal is for two parties to protect their communication against eavesdropping and active interference of an external attacker. KE is a basic procedure, frequently used to establish secure channels between parties. It is a prerequisite to a large number of protocols, including those of the above two directions. We demonstrate a subtle flaw in a previous family of KE protocols and give new KE definitions for the following practical "bank" setting. Here, a server wishes to exchange a key with a client. They have a shared password, and the client carries a "bank card", capable of storing several cryptographic keys. Finally, we present new, more efficient KE protocols for this setting, and prove their security.