There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

From the Publisher:
A valuable reference for the novice as well as for the expert who needs a wider scope of coverage within the area of cryptography, this book provides easy and rapid access of information and includes more than 200 algorithms and protocols; more than 200 tables and figures; more than 1,000 numbered definitions, facts, examples, notes, and remarks; and over 1,250 significant references, including brief comments on each paper.

Handbook of Applied Cryptography

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To solve the problem, wherein it is impossible for an electronic content information provider to provide commercially secure and effective method, for a configurable general-purpose electronic commercial transaction/distribution control system. SOLUTION: In this system, having at least one protected processing environment for safely controlling at least one portion of decoding of digital information, a secure content distribution method comprises a process for encapsulating digital information in one or more digital containers; a process for encrypting at least a portion of digital information; a process for associating at least partially secure control information for managing interactions with encrypted digital information and/or digital container; a process for delivering one or more digital containers to a digital information user; and a process for using a protected processing environment, for safely controlling at least a portion of the decoding of the digital information. COPYRIGHT: (C)2006,JPO&NCIPI

https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a423264.pdf

Systems and Methods for Secure Transaction Management and Electronic Rights Protection

We will review some of the major results in random graphs and some of the more challenging open problems. We will cover algorithmic and structural questions. We will touch on newer models, including those related to the WWW.

Random graphs

We propose a fully functional identity-based encryption scheme (IBE). The scheme has chosen ciphertext security in the random oracle model assuming an elliptic curve variant of the computational Diffie-Hellman problem. Our system is based on the Weil pairing. We give precise definitions for secure identity based encryption schemes and give several applications for such systems.

/pdf/identity-based-encryption-from-the-weil-pairing-sfqdyadlbb.pdf

Identity-Based Encryption from the Weil Pairing

We consider simple means by which two people may determine whether they possess the same information without revealing anything else to each other in case

Comparing information without leaking it

This work describes schemes for distributing between n servers the evaluation of a function f which is an approximation to a random function, such that only authorized subsets of servers are able to compute the function. A user who wants to compute f(x) should send x to the members of an authorized subset and receive information which enables him to compute f(x). We require that such a scheme is consistent, i.e. that given an input x all authorized subsets compute the same value f(x).

The solutions we present enable the operation of many servers, preventing bottlenecks or single points of failure. There are also no single entities which can compromise the security of the entire network. The solutions can be used to distribute the operation of a Key Distribution Center (KDC). They are far better than the known partitioning to domains or replication solutions to this problem, and are especially suited to handle users of multicast groups.

/pdf/distributed-pseudo-random-functions-and-kdcs-elnhpzz6dz.pdf

Distributed Pseudo-random functions and KDCs

Several peer-to-peer networks are based upon randomized graph topologies that permit efficient greedy routing, e. g., randomized hypercubes, randomized Chord, skip-graphs and constructions based upon small-world percolation networks. In each of these networks, a node has out-degree Θ(log n), where n denotes the total number of nodes, and greedy routing is known to take O(log n) hops on average. We establish lower-bounds for greedy routing for these networks, and analyze Neighbor-of-Neighbor (NoN)-greedy routing. The idea behind NoN, as the name suggests, is to take a neighbor's neighbors into account for making better routing decisions.The following picture emerges: Deterministic routing networks like hypercubes and Chord have diameter Θ(log n) and greedy routing is optimal. Randomized routing networks like randomized hypercubes, randomized Chord, and constructions based on small-world percolation networks, have diameter Θ(log n / log log n) with high probability. The expected diameter of Skip graphs is also Θ(log n / log log n). In all of these networks, greedy routing fails to find short routes, requiring Ω(log n) hops with high probability. Surprisingly, the NoN-greedy routing algorithm is able to diminish route-lengths to Θ(log n / log log n) hops, which is asymptotically optimal.

http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/%7Enaor/PAPERS/nongreedy.pdf

Know thy neighbor's neighbor: the power of lookahead in randomized P2P networks

We provide protocols for the following two-party problem: One party, the sender, has N values and the other party, the receiver, would like to learn k of them, deciding which ones in an adaptive manner (i.e. the ith value may depend on the first i-1 values). The sender does not want the receiver to obtain more than k values. This is a variant of the well known Oblivious Transfer (OT) problem and has applications in protecting privacy in various settings.

We present efficient protocols for the problem that require an O(N) computation in the preprocessing stage and fixed computation (independent of k) for each new value the receiver obtains. The on-line computation involves roughly logN invocations of a 1-out-2 OT protocol. The protocols are based on a new primitive, sum consistent synthesizers.

/pdf/oblivious-transfer-with-adaptive-queries-2ldz1bmee3.pdf

Oblivious Transfer with Adaptive Queries

We show very efficient constructions for a pseudorandom generator and for a universal one-way hash function based on the intractability of the subset-sum problem for certain dimensions. (Pseudorandom generators can be used for private-key encryption and universal one-way hash functions for signature schemes.) The increase in efficiency in our construction is due to the fact that many bits can be generated/hashed with one application of the assumed one-way function.

All of our constructions can be implemented in NC using an optimal number of processors.

/pdf/efficient-cryptographic-schemes-provably-as-secure-as-subset-3t0fpmp9ep.pdf

Moni Naor

Papers

Comparing information without leaking it

Distributed Pseudo-random functions and KDCs

Know thy neighbor's neighbor: the power of lookahead in randomized P2P networks

Oblivious Transfer with Adaptive Queries

Efficient cryptographic schemes provably as secure as subset sum