Cryptology ePrint Archive: Report 2012/006

Detecting Dangerous Queries: A New Approach for Chosen Ciphertext Security

Susan Hohenberger and Allison Lewko and Brent Waters

Abstract: We present a new approach for creating chosen ciphertext secure encryption. The focal point of our work is a new abstraction that we call "Detectable Chosen Ciphertext Security" (DCCA). Intuitively, this notion is meant to capture systems that are not necessarily chosen ciphertext attack (CCA) secure, but where we can detect whether a certain query CT can be useful for decrypting (or distinguishing) a challenge ciphertext CT*.

We show how to build chosen ciphertext secure systems from DCCA security. We motivate our techniques by describing multiple examples of DCCA systems including creating them from 1-bit CCA secure encryption --- capturing the recent Myers-shelat result (FOCS 2009). Our work identifies DCCA as a new target for building CCA secure systems.

Category / Keywords: foundations / chosen ciphertext security, encryption

Publication Info: Full version of paper in Eurocrypt 2012.

Date: received 4 Jan 2012, last revised 16 May 2012

Contact author: susan at cs jhu edu

Available formats: PDF | BibTeX Citation

Note: Minor typos fixed.

Version: 20120516:154741 (All versions of this report)

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