Paper 2023/722

Composing Bridges

Abstract

The present work builds on previous investigations of the authors (and their collaborators) regarding bridges, a certain type of morphisms between encryption schemes, making a step forward in developing a (category theory) language for studying relations between encryption schemes. Here we analyse the conditions under which bridges can be performed sequentially, formalizing the notion of composability. One of our results gives a sufficient condition for a pair of bridges to be composable. We illustrate that composing two bridges, each independently satisfying a previously established IND-CPA security definition, can actually lead to an insecure bridge. Our main result gives a sufficient condition that a pair of secure composable bridges should satisfy in order for their composition to be a secure bridge. We also introduce the concept of a complete bridge and show that it is connected to the notion of Fully composable Homomorphic Encryption (FcHE), recently considered by Micciancio. Moreover, we show that a result of Micciancio which gives a construction of FcHE schemes can be phrased in the language of complete bridges, where his insights can be formalised in a greater generality.