Paper 2014/553

A Simpler Variant of Universally Composable Security for Standard Multiparty Computation

Ran Canetti, Asaf Cohen, and Yehuda Lindell

Abstract

In this paper, we present a simpler and more restricted variant of the universally composable security (UC) framework that is suitable for ``standard'' two-party and multiparty computation tasks. Many of the complications of the UC framework exist in order to enable more general tasks than classic secure computation. This generality may be a barrier to entry for those who are used to the stand-alone model of secure computation and wish to work with universally composable security but are overwhelmed by the differences. The variant presented here (called simplified universally composable security, or just SUC) is closer to the definition of security for multiparty computation in the stand-alone setting. The main difference is that a protocol in the SUC framework runs with a \emph{fixed set of parties} who know each other's identities ahead of time, and machines \emph{cannot be added dynamically} to the execution. As a result, the definitions of polynomial time and protocol composition are much simpler. In addition, the SUC framework has authenticated channels built in, as is standard in previous definitions of security, and all communication is done via the adversary in order to enable arbitrary scheduling of messages. Due to these differences, not all cryptographic tasks can be expressed in the SUC framework. Nevertheless, standard secure computation tasks (like secure function evaluation) can be expressed. Importantly, we show a natural security-preserving transformation from protocols in the SUC model to protocols in the full-fledged UC model. Consequently, the UC composition theorem holds in the SUC model, and any protocol that is proven secure under SUC can be transformed to a protocol that is secure in the UC model.