### Non-Malleable Codes

Stefan Dziembowski, Krzysztof Pietrzak, and Daniel Wichs

##### Abstract

We introduce the notion of “non-malleable codes” which relaxes the notion of error correction and error detection. Informally, a code is non-malleable if the message contained in a modified codeword is either the original message, or a completely unrelated value. In contrast to error-correction and error-detection, non malleability can be achieved for very rich classes of modifications. We construct an efficient code that is non-malleable with respect to modifications that effect each bit of the codeword arbitrarily (i.e. leave it untouched, flip it or set it to either 0 or 1), but independently of the value of the other bits of the codeword. Using the probabilistic method, we also show a very strong and general statement: there exists a non-malleable code for every “small enough” family F of functions via which codewords can be modified. Although this probabilistic method argument does not directly yield efficient constructions, it gives us efficient non-malleable codes in the random-oracle model for very general classes of tampering functions-e.g. functions where every bit in the tampered codeword can depend arbitrarily on any 99% of the bits in the original codeword. As an application of non-malleable codes, we show that they provide an elegant algorithmic solution to the task of protecting functionalities implemented in hardware (e.g. signature cards) against “tampering attacks”. In such attacks, the secret state of a physical system is tampered, in the hopes that future interaction with the modified system will reveal some secret information. This problem, was previously studied in the work of Gennaro et al. in 2004 under the name “algorithmic tamper proof security” (ATP). We show that non-malleable codes can be used to achieve important improvements over the prior work. In particular, we show that any functionality can be made secure against a large class of tampering attacks, simply by encoding the secret-state with a non-malleable code while it is stored in memory.

Note: Full Version

Available format(s)
Category
Foundations
Publication info
Published elsewhere. ICS 2010 -- Innovations in Computer Science
Keywords
Error-Correcting CodesInformation TheoryTamper-Proof Security
Contact author(s)
wichs @ cs nyu edu
History
2010-01-15: revised
See all versions
Short URL
https://ia.cr/2009/608

CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2009/608,
author = {Stefan Dziembowski and Krzysztof Pietrzak and Daniel Wichs},
title = {Non-Malleable Codes},
howpublished = {Cryptology ePrint Archive, Paper 2009/608},
year = {2009},
note = {\url{https://eprint.iacr.org/2009/608}},
url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2009/608}
}

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