Public-key searchable encryption allows keyword-associated tokens to be used to test if a ciphertext contains specific keywords. Due to the low entropies of keywords, the token holder can create ciphertexts from candidate keywords and test them using the token in hand to recover the keywords, known as inside keyword guessing attacks (IKGA). Public-key authenticated encryption with keyword search is a searchable encryption proposed to defend against such attacks. It ensures the sender's private key protects the ciphertexts from the IKGA. PAEKS schemes with reasonable security and practical efficiency remain elusive despite many proposals. This work provides a simple generic PAEKS scheme from non-interactive key exchange (NIKE) and symmetric-key equality-predicate encryption with three new constructions for the latter, respectively from pseudorandom functions (PRFs), the decision bilinear Diffie-Hellman assumption, and the learning-with-errors assumption. Instantiating our generic scheme, we derive several PAEKS schemes from the most well-known assumptions, with some of them achieving full cipher-keyword indistinguishability and full token indistinguishability in the standard model, for the first time. Our instantiated schemes allow practical implementations and outperform the existing PAEKS schemes under the same assumptions.

Transitioning from classically to quantum secure key agreement protocols may require to exchange fundamental components, for example, exchanging Diffie-Hellman-like key exchange with a key encapsulation mechanism (KEM). Accordingly, the corresponding security proof can no longer rely on the Diffie-Hellman assumption, thus invalidating the security guarantees. As a consequence, the security properties have to be re-proven under a KEM-based security notion.

We initiate the study of the LDACS key agreement protocol (Edition 01.01.00 from 25.04.2023), which is soon-to-be-standardized by the International Civil Aviation Organization. The protocol's cipher suite features Diffie-Hellman as well as a KEM-based key agreement protocol to provide post-quantum security. While the former results in an instantiation of an ISO key agreement inheriting all security properties, the security achieved by the latter is ambiguous. We formalize the computational security using the systematic notions of de Saint Guilhem, Fischlin and Warinshi (CSF '20), and prove the exact security that the KEM-based variant achieves in this model; primarily entity authentication, key secrecy and key authentication. To further strengthen our “pen-and-paper” findings, we model the protocol and its security guarantees using Tamarin, providing an automated proof of the security against a Dolev-Yao attacker.

Verifiable encryption (VE) is a protocol where one can provide assurance that an encrypted plaintext satisfies certain properties, or relations. It is an important building block in cryptography with many useful applications, such as key escrow, group signatures, optimistic fair exchange, and others. However, the majority of previous VE schemes are restricted to instantiation with specific public-key encryption schemes or relations. In this work, we propose a novel framework that realizes VE protocols using zero-knowledge proof systems based on the MPC-in-the-head paradigm (Ishai et al. STOC 2007). Our generic compiler can turn a large class of zero-knowledge proofs into secure VE protocols for any secure public-key encryption scheme with the undeniability property, a notion that essentially guarantees binding of encryption when used as a commitment scheme. Our framework is versatile: because the circuit proven by the MPC-in-the-head prover is decoupled from a complex encryption function, the work of the prover is focused on proving the encrypted data satisfies the relation, not the proof of plaintext knowledge. Hence, our approach allows for instantiation with various combinations of properties about the encrypted data and encryption functions. We then consider concrete applications, to demonstrate the efficiency of our framework, by first giving a new approach and implementation to verifiably encrypt discrete logarithms in any prime order group more efficiently than was previously known. Then we give the first practical verifiable encryption scheme for AES keys with post-quantum security, along with an implementation and benchmarks.

In this work, we assess the real-world practicality of CSIDH, an isogeny-based non-interactive key exchange. We provide the first thorough assessment of the practicality of CSIDH in higher parameter sizes for conservative estimates of quantum security, and with protection against physical attacks.

This requires a three-fold analysis of CSIDH. First, we describe two approaches to efficient high-security CSIDH implementations, based on SQALE and CTIDH. Second, we optimize such high-security implementations, on a high level by improving several subroutines, and on a low level by improving the finite field arithmetic. Third, we benchmark the performance of high-security CSIDH. As a stand-alone primitive, our implementations outperform previous results by a factor up to 2.53×.

As a real-world use case considering network protocols, we use CSIDH in TLS variants that allow early authentication through a NIKE. Although our instantiations of CSIDH have smaller communication requirements than post-quantum KEM and signature schemes, even our highly-optimized implementations result in too-large handshake latency (tens of seconds), showing that CSIDH is only practical in niche cases.