Computer security model

Abstract: The common random string model introduced by Blum, Feldman and Micali permits the construction of cryptographic protocols that are provably impossible to realize in the standard model. We can think of this model as a trusted party generating a random string and giving it to all parties in the protocol. However, the introduction of such a third party should set alarm bells going off: Who is this trusted party? Why should we trust that the string is random? Even if the string is uniformly random, how do we know it does not leak private information to the trusted party? The very point of doing cryptography in the first place is to prevent us from trusting the wrong people with our secrets. In this paper, we propose the more realistic multi-string model. Instead of having one trusted authority, we have several authorities that generate random strings. We do not trust any single authority; we only assume a majority of them generate the random string honestly. This security model is reasonable, yet at the same time it is very easy to implement. We could for instance imagine random strings being provided on the Internet, and any set of parties that want to execute a protocol just need to agree on which authorities' strings they want to use. We demonstrate the use of the multi-string model in several fundamental cryptographic tasks. We define multi-string non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs and prove that they exist under general cryptographic assumptions. Our multistring NIZK proofs have very strong security properties such as simulation-extractability and extraction zero-knowledge, which makes it possible to compose them with arbitrary other protocols and to reuse the random strings. We also build efficient simulation-sound multi-string NIZK proofs for circuit satisfiability based on groups with a bilinear map. The sizes of these proofs match the best constructions in the single common random string model. We suggest a universally composable commitment scheme in the multistring model. It has been proven that UC commitment does not exist in the plain model without setup assumptions. Prior to this work, constructions were only known in the common reference string model and the registered public key model. One of the applications of the UC commitment scheme is a coin-flipping protocol in the multi-string model. Armed with the coin-flipping protocol, we can securely realize any multi-party computation protocol.

Abstract: While the economic and technological advantages of cloud computing are apparent, its overall uptake has been limited, in part, due to the lack of security assurance and transparency on the Cloud Service Provider (CSP). Although, the recent efforts on specification of security using Service Level Agreements, also known as “Security Level Agreements” or secSLAs is a positive development multiple technical and usability issues limit the adoption of Cloud secSLA’s in practice. In this paper we develop two evaluation techniques, namely QPT and QHP, for conducting the quantitative assessment and analysis of the secSLA based security level provided by CSPs with respect to a set of Cloud Customer security requirements. These proposed techniques help improve the security requirements specifications by introducing a flexible and simple methodology that allows Customers to identify and represent their specific security needs. Apart from detailing guidance on the standalone and collective use of QPT and QHP, these techniques are validated using two use case scenarios and a prototype, leveraging actual real-world CSP secSLAdata derived from the Cloud Security Alliance’s Security, Trust and Assurance Registry.

Abstract: A proxy signature scheme allows an entity to delegate its signing capability to another entity (proxy) in such a way that the proxy can sign messages on behalf of the delegator. Proxy signatures have found numerous practical applications such as distributed systems, mobile agent applications, etc. Recently, Xu, Zhang and Feng proposed the first formal models of identity based proxy signature. Unfortunately, their model does not capture the notion of adaptively chosen message and chosen identity attacker in identity based system. In this paper, we redefine the security models of identity based proxy signature to capture the most stringent attacks against adaptively chosen message and chosen identity attacker. We also propose a new provably secure identity basad proxy signature scheme whose security is based on the hardness of Computational Diffie-Hellman problem in the random oracle model.