The Distinction Between Fixed and Random Generators in Group-Based Assumptions

James Bartusek, Fermi Ma, Mark Zhandry

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

13 Scopus citations

Abstract

There is surprisingly little consensus on the precise role of the generator g in group-based assumptions such as DDH. Some works consider g to be a fixed part of the group description, while others take it to be random. We study this subtle distinction from a number of angles. In the generic group model, we demonstrate the plausibility of groups in which random-generator DDH (resp. CDH) is hard but fixed-generator DDH (resp. CDH) is easy. We observe that such groups have interesting cryptographic applications.We find that seemingly tight generic lower bounds for the Discrete-Log and CDH problems with preprocessing (Corrigan-Gibbs and Kogan, Eurocrypt 2018) are not tight in the sub-constant success probability regime if the generator is random. We resolve this by proving tight lower bounds for the random generator variants; our results formalize the intuition that using a random generator will reduce the effectiveness of preprocessing attacks.We observe that DDH-like assumptions in which exponents are drawn from low-entropy distributions are particularly sensitive to the fixed- vs. random-generator distinction. Most notably, we discover that the Strong Power DDH assumption of Komargodski and Yogev (Komargodski and Yogev, Eurocrypt 2018) used for non-malleable point obfuscation is in fact false precisely because it requires a fixed generator. In response, we formulate an alternative fixed-generator assumption that suffices for a new construction of non-malleable point obfuscation, and we prove the assumption holds in the generic group model. We also give a generic group proof for the security of fixed-generator, low-entropy DDH (Canetti, Crypto 1997).

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationAdvances in Cryptology – CRYPTO 2019 - 39th Annual International Cryptology Conference, Proceedings
EditorsAlexandra Boldyreva, Daniele Micciancio
PublisherSpringer Verlag
Pages801-830
Number of pages30
ISBN (Print)9783030269500
DOIs
StatePublished - 2019
Event39th Annual International Cryptology Conference, CRYPTO 2019 - Santa Barbara, United States
Duration: Aug 18 2019Aug 22 2019

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume11693 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference39th Annual International Cryptology Conference, CRYPTO 2019
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CitySanta Barbara
Period8/18/198/22/19

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • General Computer Science

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