Paper 2014/507

How to Generate and use Universal Parameters

Dennis Hofheinz and Tibor Jager and Dakshita Khurana and Amit Sahai and Brent Waters and Mark Zhandry

Abstract

We introduce the notion of \emph{universal parameters} as a method for generating the trusted parameters for many schemes from just a single trusted setup. In such a scheme a trusted setup process will produce universal parameters $U$. These parameters can then be combined with the description, $d(\cdot)$ of any particular cryptographic setup algorithm to produce parameters $p_d$ that can be used by the cryptographic system associated with $d$. We give a solution in the random oracle model based on indistinguishability obfuscation. We demonstrate the versatility of universal parameters by showing how they give rise to applications such as identity-based encryption and multiparty key exchange. More generally, our applications are driven from the observation that universal parameters can also be seen as universal samplers, allowing a user to \emph{sample} from arbitrary efficiently sampleable distributions.

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