Paper 2022/293

Minimizing Setup in Broadcast-Optimal Two Round MPC

Abstract

In this paper we consider two-round secure computation protocols which use different communication channels in different rounds: namely, protocols where broadcast is available in neither round, both rounds, only the first round, or only the second round. The prior works of Cohen, Garay and Zikas (Eurocrypt 2020) and Damgård, Magri, Ravi, Siniscalchi and Yakoubov (Crypto 2021) give tight characterizations of which security guarantees are achievable for various thresholds in each communication structure. In this work, we introduce a new security notion, namely, selective identifiable abort, which guarantees that every honest party either obtains the output, or aborts identifying one corrupt party (where honest parties may potentially identify different corrupted parties). We investigate what broadcast patterns in two-round MPC allow achieving this guarantee across various settings (such as with or without PKI, with or without an honest majority). Further, we determine what is possible in the honest majority setting without a PKI, closing a question left open by Damgård et al. We show that without a PKI, having an honest majority does not make it possible to achieve stronger security guarantees compared to the dishonest majority setting. However, if two-thirds of the parties are guaranteed to be honest, identifiable abort is additionally achievable using broadcast only in the second round. We use fundamentally different techniques from the previous works to avoid relying on private communication in the first round when a PKI is not available, since assuming such private channels without the availability of public encryption keys is unrealistic. We also show that, somewhat surprisingly, the availability of private channels in the first round does not enable stronger security guarantees unless the corruption threshold is one.