Paper 2025/544

Security Analysis of Covercrypt: A Quantum-Safe Hybrid Key Encapsulation Mechanism for Hidden Access Policies

Théophile Brézot, Cosmian, Paris, France
Chloé Hébant, Cosmian, Paris, France
Paola de Perthuis, Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI), Nederland
David Pointcheval, Cosmian, Paris, France, DIENS, ENS, PSL University, CNRS, Inria, Paris, France
Abstract

The ETSI Technical Specification 104 015 proposes a framework to build Key Encapsulation Mechanisms (KEMs) with access policies and attributes, in the Ciphertext-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption (CP-ABE) vein. Several security guarantees and functionalities are claimed, such as pre-quantum and post-quantum hybridization to achieve security against Chosen-Ciphertext Attacks (CCA), anonymity, and traceability. In this paper, we present a formal security analysis of a more generic construction, with application to the specific Covercrypt scheme, based on the pre-quantum ECDH and the post-quantum ML-KEM KEMs. We additionally provide an open-source library that implements the ETSI standard, in Rust, with high effiency.

Metadata
Available format(s)
PDF
Category
Cryptographic protocols
Publication info
Preprint.
Keywords
ABEPost-QuantumHybridImplementation
Contact author(s)
theophile brezot @ cosmian com
chloe hebant @ cosmian com
paola de perthuis @ cwi nl
david pointcheval @ cosmian com
History
2025-03-25: approved
2025-03-24: received
See all versions
Short URL
https://ia.cr/2025/544
License
Creative Commons Attribution
CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2025/544,
      author = {Théophile Brézot and Chloé Hébant and Paola de Perthuis and David Pointcheval},
      title = {Security Analysis of Covercrypt: A Quantum-Safe Hybrid Key Encapsulation Mechanism for Hidden Access Policies},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2025/544},
      year = {2025},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/544}
}
Note: In order to protect the privacy of readers, eprint.iacr.org does not use cookies or embedded third party content.