CS276 Lecture 23 (draft)

Summary

Today we show how to construct an efficient CCA-secure public-key encryption scheme in the random oracle model using RSA.

As we discussed in the previous lecture, a cryptographic scheme defined in the random oracle model is allowed to use a random function ${H: \{ 0,1 \}^n \rightarrow \{ 0,1 \}^m}$ which is known to all the parties. In an implementation, usually a cryptographic hash function replaces the random oracle. In general, the fact that a scheme is proved secure in the random oracle model does not imply that it is secure when the random oracle is replaced by a hash function; the proof of security in the random oracle model gives, however, at least some heuristic confidence in the soundness of the design.

1. Hybrid Encryption with a Random Oracle

We describe a public-key encryption scheme ${(\overline G, \overline E, \overline D)}$ which is based on: (1) a family of trapdoor permutations (for concreteness, we shall refer specifically to RSA below); (2) a CCA-secure private-key encryption scheme ${(E,D)}$ ; (3) a random oracle ${H}$ mapping elements in the domain and range of the trapdoor permutation into keys for the private-key encryption scheme ${(E,D)}$ .

Key generation: ${\overline G}$ picks an RSA public-key / private-key pair ${(N,e),(N,d)}$ ;
Encryption: given a public key ${N,e}$ and a plaintext ${M}$ , ${\overline E}$ picks at random ${R \in {\mathbb Z}_N}$ , and outputs
$\displaystyle R^d \bmod N, E(H(R),M)$
Decryption: given a private key ${N,d}$ and a cyphertext ${C_1,C_2}$ , ${\overline D}$ decrypts the plaintext by computing ${R := C_1^d \bmod N}$ and ${M := D(H(R),C_2)}$ .

This is a hybrid encryption scheme in which RSA is used to encrypt a “session key” which is then used to encrypt the plaintext via a private-key scheme. The important difference from hybrid schemes we discussed before is that the random string encrypted with RSA is “hashed” with the random oracle before being used as a session key.

2. Security Analysis

Theorem 1 Suppose that, for the key size used in ${(\overline G, \overline E, \overline D)}$ , RSA is a ${(t,\epsilon)}$ -secure family of trapdoor permutations, and that exponentiation can be computed in time ${\leq r}$ ; assume also that ${(E,D)}$ is a ${(t,\epsilon)}$ CCA-secure private-key encryption scheme and that ${E,D}$ can be computed in time ${\leq r}$ .

Then ${(\overline G, \overline E, \overline D)}$ is ${(t/O(r),2\epsilon)}$ CCA-secure in the random oracle model.

We sketch an outline of the proof. We assume that there is an algorithm ${A}$ showing that ${(\overline G, \overline E, \overline D)}$ is not ${(t',\epsilon')}$ CCA-secure. From ${A}$ we derive an algorithm ${A'}$ running in time ${O(t'\cdot r)}$ which is a CCA attack on ${(E,D)}$ . If ${A'}$ succeeds with probability at least ${\epsilon}$ as a distinguishing CCA attack against ${(E,D)}$ , then we have violated the assumption on the security of ${(E,D)}$ . But if ${A'}$ succeeds with probability less than ${\epsilon}$ , then we can devise an algorithm ${A''}$ , also of running time ${O(t'\cdot r)}$ , which inverts RSA with probability at least ${\epsilon}$ .

in theory

"Marge, I agree with you – in theory. In theory, communism works. In theory." — Homer Simpson

CS276 Lecture 23 (draft)

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