Ronald Cramer

On recent algebraic paradigms for practical encryption with chosen cipher-text security

After briefly reviewing public-key crypto-systems and their security, I'll discuss some recent results on practical public-key crypto-systems that enjoy the highest level of security for such systems. This is joint work with Victor Shoup (Courant Institute, NYU). A Hash Proof System (HPS) is a new cryptographic primitive that enables generic construction of a public-key crypto-system that withstands adaptively chosen ciphertext attacks. Concrete instance of HPS can be constructed from groups that admit certain convenient homomorphisms. Security is derived from the hardness of distinguishing a given sub-group from the rest of the group. This leads to several new practical schemes. One example is based on the classical Quadratic Residuosity Assumption, while another is based on Paillier's Decision Composite Residuosity Assumption. The so-called Cramer-Shoup scheme (1998), which is based on the Decisional Diffie/Hellman assumption and which was up to now the only practical public-key crypto-system proven to be secure against adaptive chosen cipher-text attack in the standard cryptographic model, is also an instance of the construction. Time permitting we will discuss recent proposals for identity based encryption based on pairings on elliptic curves.

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