On the leakage resilience of secure channel establishment

Secure communication channels are typically constructed from an authenticated key exchange (AKE) protocol, which authenticates the communicating parties and establishes shared secret keys, and a secure data transmission layer, which uses the secret keys to encrypt data. We address the partial leakage of communicating parties' long-term secret keys due to various side-channel attacks, and the partial leakage of plaintext due to data compression. Both issues can negatively affect the security of channel establishment and data transmission. In this work, we advance the modelling of security for AKE protocols by considering more granular partial leakage of parties' long-term secrets. We present generic and concrete constructions of two-pass leakage-resilient key exchange protocols that are secure in the proposed security models. We also examine two techniques--heuristic separation of secrets and fixed-dictionary compression--for enabling compression while protecting high-value secrets.

Double-authentication-preventing signatures

Digital signatures are often used by trusted authorities to make unique bindings between a subject and a digital object; for example, certificate authorities certify a public key belongs to a domain name, and time-stamping authorities certify that a certain piece of information existed at a certain time. Traditional digital signature schemes however impose no uniqueness conditions, so a trusted authority could make multiple certifications for the same subject but different objects, be it intentionally, by accident, or following a (legal or illegal) coercion. We propose the notion of a double-authentication-preventing signature, in which a value to be signed is split into two parts: a subject and a message. If a signer ever signs two different messages for the same subject, enough information is revealed to allow anyone to compute valid signatures on behalf of the signer. This double-signature forgeability property discourages signers from misbehaving—a form of self-enforcement—and would give binding authorities like CAs some cryptographic arguments to resist legal coercion. We give a generic construction using a new type of trapdoor functions with extractability properties, which we show can be instantiated using the group of sign-agnostic quadratic residues modulo a Blum integer; we show an additional application of these new extractable trapdoor functions to standard digital signatures.

Spatial and temporal determinants of Finnish farmland bird populations

During the past decades agricultural intensification has caused dramatic population declines in a wide range of taxa related to farmland habitats, including farmland birds. In this thesis, I studied how boreal farmland landscape characteristics and agricultural land use affect the abundance and diversity of farmland birds using extensive field data collected by territory mapping of breeding farmland birds in various parts of Finland. My results show that the area and openness of agricultural areas are key determinants of farmland bird abundance and distribution. A landscape composition with enough open farmland combined with key habitats such as farmyards and wetland is likely to provide essential prerequisites for the occurrence of a rich farmland avifauna. In Finland, the majority of large areas suitable for open habitat specialists are located in southern and western parts of the country. However, the diversity of the species with an unfavourable conservation status in Europe (SPECs) had notable hotspot areas in northern and north-western agricultural areas. I found that in boreal agroecosystems farmland birds favour fields with springtime vegetative cover, especially agricultural grasslands and set-asides. Hence, in the spring cereal dominated Finnish agroecosystems it is the absence of field vegetation that may limit populations of many farmland bird species. It is likely that the decrease of crops providing vegetative cover in the spring, such as permanent grasslands, cultivated grass, and autumn-sown cereals, has greatly contributed to the declines of Finnish farmland birds. Grass crops have persistently declined in Finland as a consequence of specialization in crop production and the large-scale decline in livestock husbandry. Small-scale non-crop habitats, especially ditches and ditch margins, are also important for many bird species in the Finnish agroecosystems, but have dramatically declined during the last decades. A major problem for farmland bird conservation in Finland is the conflict between landscape structure and agricultural management. Areas with mixed and cattle farming are virtually absent from the large agricultural plains of southern and south-western Finland, where the landscape structure is more likely to be favourable for rich farmland bird assemblages. On the other hand, mixed and cattle farming is still rather frequent in northern and central parts of the country, where the landscape structure is not suitable for many farmland specialist birds requiring open landscapes. My results provide useful guidelines for farmland bird conservation, and imply that considerable attention needs to be paid to landscape factors when selecting areas for various conservational management actions, such as agri-environment schemes. Actions promoting the abundance of set-asides, grass crops, and ditches would markedly benefit Finnish farmland bird populations. Organic farming may benefit farmland birds, but it is not clear how general its beneficial effect is in boreal agroecosystems. The most urgent action aiming to preserve farmland biodiversity would be to support re-introducing and sustaining cattle farming by environmental subsidies. This would be especially beneficial in the southern parts of Finland, where the landscape characteristics and abundance of agricultural areas are most suitable for farmland birds and where cattle farming is currently rare.

Algebraic Cryptanalysis of CTRU Cryptosystem

CTRU, a public key cryptosystem was proposed by Gaborit, Ohler and Sole. It is analogue of NTRU, the ring of integers replaced by the ring of polynomials $\mathbb{F}_2[T]$ . It attracted attention as the attacks based on either LLL algorithm or the Chinese Remainder Theorem are avoided on it, which is most common on NTRU. In this paper we presents a polynomial-time algorithm that breaks CTRU for all recommended parameter choices that were derived to make CTRU secure against popov normal form attack. The paper shows if we ascertain the constraints for perfect decryption then either plaintext or private key can be achieved by polynomial time linear algebra attack.

From Selective-ID to Full-ID IBS without Random Oracles

Since its induction, the selective-identity (sID) model for identity-based cryptosystems and its relationship with various other notions of security has been extensively studied. As a result, it is a general consensus that the sID model is much weaker than the full-identity (ID) model. In this paper, we study the sID model for the particular case of identity-based signatures (IBS). The main focus is on the problem of constructing an ID-secure IBS given an sID-secure IBS without using random oracles-the so-called standard model-and with reasonable security degradation. We accomplish this by devising a generic construction which uses as black-box: i) a chameleon hash function and ii) a weakly-secure public-key signature. We argue that the resulting IBS is ID-secure but with a tightness gap of O(q(s)), where q(s) is the upper bound on the number of signature queries that the adversary is allowed to make. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt at such a generic construction.

Criptografia: Da origem aos dias atuais

Esta pesquisa foi realizada com a intenção de motivar o estudo da criptografia, mostrando que a matemática e a comunicação estão presentes em diversos momentos, tanto no passado quanto no presente. Este trabalho mostra a origem da criptoanálise e toda a sua evolução dando ênfase nos mecanismos de codificação e decodificação através de exemplos práticos. Além disso, alguns métodos criptográficos são destacados como a cifra de substituição monoalfabética, a cifra de Vigenère, a criptografia RSA que é o método mais conhecido de criptografia de chave pública, as cifras de Hill, o método das transformações lineares e o método de Rabin, devido a sua grande importância para a evolução de sistemas computacionais e assinaturas digitais entre outros. Por fim, mostra-se a importância e a necessidade dos recursos criptográficos nos dias de hoje, na tentativa de impedir que hackers e pessoas que fazem mau uso do conhecimento matemático possam causar danos a sociedade, seja por uma simples mensagem ou até mesmo através de situações mais imprudentes como as transações bancárias indevidas

纯公钥模型下对NP语言的高效并发零知识证明系统

提出了一种从3轮公开掷币的对任何NP语言的诚实验证者零知识证明系统到纯公钥模型下4轮f轮最优）对同一语言的具有并发合理性的并发零知识证明系统．该转化方法有如下优点：1）它只引起D（1）（常数个）额外的模指数运算，相比DiCrescenzo等人在ICALP05上提出的需要qn）个额外的模指数运算的转化方法孩系统在效率上有着本质上的提高，而所需的困难性假设不变；2）在离散对数假设下，该转化方法产生一个完美零知识证明系统．注意到DiCrescenzo等人提出的系统只具有计算零知识性质．该转化方法依赖于一个特殊的对承诺中的离散对数的3轮诚实验证者零知识的证明系统．构造了两个基于不同承诺方案的只需要常数个模指数运算的系统这种系统可能有着独立价值．

基于组合对称密钥的机密数据存储和传输研究

针对内网办公中机密数据需要安全和高速加解密的特点，本文提出了基于组合对称密钥的机密数据存储和传输方案。其中组合对称密钥的加密方法与以往对称加密相比，具有加密密钥一次一变和密钥免维护的优点：与传统的非对称加密相比，具有加解密速度快，密钥管理简单的特点，并且该方案能够在基于对称加密的系统中实现一人加密文件，多人可以解密查看。

基于安全芯片的防伪数码相机

为了改进现有防伪数码相机不能处理通过翻拍伪造数码照片的缺陷,提出了一种新的基于安全芯片的防伪数码相机架构。在拍摄时将所拍摄的区域分成多个小单元,并用对焦测距系统测量各个单元到相机的距离。用安全芯片对图像元数据、图像内容及距离信息进行数字签名,并将签名内容及距离信息都保存在图像文件的元数据里。通过验证数字签名有效且距离信息不完全相等来保证图片的真实可信。该防伪数码相机能同时发现照片在拍摄后被篡改和翻拍问题,所拍摄照片真实可信。

基于随机背包的公钥密码

该文构造了一个背包型公钥密码算法。该背包公钥密码具有如下优点:加解密只需要加法和模减法运算,因此加解密速度快;该算法是基于随机背包问题而不是易解背包问题而构造的;证明了在攻击者不掌握私钥信息情况下该密码算法能抵抗直接求解背包问题的攻击,包括低密度攻击和联立丢番图逼近攻击等;证明了攻击者能够恢复私钥信息与攻击者能够分解一个大整数是等价的。分析表明,该算法是一个安全高效的公钥加密算法。

Keeping Secrets in Hardware: the Microsoft Xbox(TM) Case Study

This paper discusses the hardware foundations of the cryptosystem employed by the Xbox(TM) video game console from Microsoft. A secret boot block overlay is buried within a system ASIC. This secret boot block decrypts and verifies portions of an external FLASH-type ROM. The presence of the secret boot block is camouflaged by a decoy boot block in the external ROM. The code contained within the secret boot block is transferred to the CPU in the clear over a set of high-speed busses where it can be extracted using simple custom hardware. The paper concludes with recommendations for improving the Xbox security system. One lesson of this study is that the use of a high-performance bus alone is not a sufficient security measure, given the advent of inexpensive, fast rapid prototyping services and high-performance FPGAs.

Hardware design of cryptographic accelerators

With the rapid growth of the Internet and digital communications, the volume of sensitive electronic transactions being transferred and stored over and on insecure media has increased dramatically in recent years. The growing demand for cryptographic systems to secure this data, across a multitude of platforms, ranging from large servers to small mobile devices and smart cards, has necessitated research into low cost, flexible and secure solutions. As constraints on architectures such as area, speed and power become key factors in choosing a cryptosystem, methods for speeding up the development and evaluation process are necessary. This thesis investigates flexible hardware architectures for the main components of a cryptographic system. Dedicated hardware accelerators can provide significant performance improvements when compared to implementations on general purpose processors. Each of the designs proposed are analysed in terms of speed, area, power, energy and efficiency. Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are chosen as the development platform due to their fast development time and reconfigurable nature. Firstly, a reconfigurable architecture for performing elliptic curve point scalar multiplication on an FPGA is presented. Elliptic curve cryptography is one such method to secure data, offering similar security levels to traditional systems, such as RSA, but with smaller key sizes, translating into lower memory and bandwidth requirements. The architecture is implemented using different underlying algorithms and coordinates for dedicated Double-and-Add algorithms, twisted Edwards algorithms and SPA secure algorithms, and its power consumption and energy on an FPGA measured. Hardware implementation results for these new algorithms are compared against their software counterparts and the best choices for minimum area-time and area-energy circuits are then identified and examined for larger key and field sizes. Secondly, implementation methods for another component of a cryptographic system, namely hash functions, developed in the recently concluded SHA-3 hash competition are presented. Various designs from the three rounds of the NIST run competition are implemented on FPGA along with an interface to allow fair comparison of the different hash functions when operating in a standardised and constrained environment. Different methods of implementation for the designs and their subsequent performance is examined in terms of throughput, area and energy costs using various constraint metrics. Comparing many different implementation methods and algorithms is nontrivial. Another aim of this thesis is the development of generic interfaces used both to reduce implementation and test time and also to enable fair baseline comparisons of different algorithms when operating in a standardised and constrained environment. Finally, a hardware-software co-design cryptographic architecture is presented. This architecture is capable of supporting multiple types of cryptographic algorithms and is described through an application for performing public key cryptography, namely the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA). This architecture makes use of the elliptic curve architecture and the hash functions described previously. These components, along with a random number generator, provide hardware acceleration for a Microblaze based cryptographic system. The trade-off in terms of performance for flexibility is discussed using dedicated software, and hardware-software co-design implementations of the elliptic curve point scalar multiplication block. Results are then presented in terms of the overall cryptographic system.

An adaptable and scalable asymmetric cryptographic processor

In this paper a novel scalable public-key processor architecture is presented that supports modular exponentiation and Elliptic Curve Cryptography over both prime GF(p) and binary GF(2) extension fields. This is achieved by a high performance instruction set that provides a comprehensive range of integer and polynomial basis field arithmetic. The instruction set and associated hardware are generic in nature and do not specifically support any cryptographic algorithms or protocols. Firmware within the device is used to efficiently implement complex and data intensive arithmetic. A firmware library has been developed in order to demonstrate support for numerous exponentiation and ECC approaches, such as different coordinate systems and integer recoding methods. The processor has been developed as a high-performance asymmetric cryptography platform in the form of a scalable Verilog RTL core. Various features of the processor may be scaled, such as the pipeline width and local memory subsystem, in order to suit area, speed and power requirements. The processor is evaluated and compares favourably with previous work in terms of performance while offering an unparalleled degree of flexibility. © 2006 IEEE.

Using simulation to assess cardiac first-responder schemes exhibiting stochastic and spatial complexities

A Monte-Carlo simulation-based model has been constructed to assess a public health scheme involving mobile-volunteer cardiac First-Responders. The scheme being assessed aims to improve survival of Sudden-Cardiac-Arrest (SCA) patients, through reducing the time until administration of life-saving defibrillation treatment, with volunteers being paged to respond to possible SCA incidents alongside the Emergency Medical Services. The need for a model, for example, to assess the impact of the scheme in different geographical regions, was apparent upon collection of observational trial data (given it exhibited stochastic and spatial complexities). The simulation-based model developed has been validated and then used to assess the scheme's benefits in an alternative rural region (not a part of the original trial). These illustrative results conclude that the scheme may not be the most efficient use of National Health Service resources in this geographical region, thus demonstrating the importance and usefulness of simulation modelling in aiding decision making.

Algebraic Geometric Codes and their relation to Cryptography using Elliptic Curves

Communication is the process of transmitting data across channel. Whenever data is transmitted across a channel, errors are likely to occur. Coding theory is a stream of science that deals with finding efficient ways to encode and decode data, so that any likely errors can be detected and corrected. There are many methods to achieve coding and decoding. One among them is Algebraic Geometric Codes that can be constructed from curves. Cryptography is the science ol‘ security of transmitting messages from a sender to a receiver. The objective is to encrypt message in such a way that an eavesdropper would not be able to read it. A eryptosystem is a set of algorithms for encrypting and decrypting for the purpose of the process of encryption and decryption. Public key eryptosystem such as RSA and DSS are traditionally being prel‘en‘ec| for the purpose of secure communication through the channel. llowever Elliptic Curve eryptosystem have become a viable altemative since they provide greater security and also because of their usage of key of smaller length compared to other existing crypto systems. Elliptic curve cryptography is based on group of points on an elliptic curve over a finite field. This thesis deals with Algebraic Geometric codes and their relation to Cryptography using elliptic curves. Here Goppa codes are used and the curves used are elliptic curve over a finite field. We are relating Algebraic Geometric code to Cryptography by developing a cryptographic algorithm, which includes the process of encryption and decryption of messages. We are making use of fundamental properties of Elliptic curve cryptography for generating the algorithm and is used here to relate both.