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Verifiable Obtained Random Subsets for Improving SPHINCS+

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Information Security and Privacy (ACISP 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 13083))

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Abstract

SPHINCS+ is a stateless hash-based digital signature scheme and an alternate candidate in round 3 of the NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography standardization competition. Although not considered as a finalist because of its performance, SPHINCS+may be considered for standardization by NIST after another round of evaluations. In this paper, we propose a Verifiable Obtained Random Subsets (v-ORS) generation mechanism which with one extra hash computation binds the message with the signing FORS instance (the underlying few-time signature algorithm). This enables SPHINCS+ to offer more security against generic attacks because the proposed modification restricts the ORS generation to use a hash key from the utilized signing FORS instance. Consequently, such a modification enables the exploration of different parameter sets for FORS to achieve better performance at the same security level. For instance, when using v-ORS, one parameter set for SPHINCS+-256s provides 82.9% reduction in the computation cost of FORS which leads to around 27% reduction in the number of hash calls of the signing procedure. Given that NIST has identified the performance of SPHINCS+ as its main drawback, these results are a step forward in the path to standardization.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada

    Mahmoud Yehia, Riham AlTawy & T. Aaron Gulliver

Authors
  1. Mahmoud Yehia
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  2. Riham AlTawy
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  3. T. Aaron Gulliver
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Riham AlTawy .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia

    Joonsang Baek

  2. Data61, CSIRO, Marsfield, NSW, Australia

    Sushmita Ruj

A Existential Unforgeability Under Adaptive Chosen Message Attacks

A Existential Unforgeability Under Adaptive Chosen Message Attacks

Digital Signature Schemes are analyzed with respect to existential unforgeability under adaptive chosen message attacks (EU-CMA). EU-CMA is usually defined by a security game in which the adversary \(\mathcal {A}\) who has access to the scheme’s public key is allowed to ask the signing challenger, Chall, for signatures of the messages of their choice. \(\mathcal {A}\) wins the game if they are able to return a message and signature pair such that the signature is valid for that message and the message is not one of the queried ones. A digital signature scheme is secure with respect to EU-CMA if the probability of \(\mathcal {A}\) winning the game () is negligible. For a digital signature scheme \(\Sigma \) and a security parameter n, the formal EU-CMA security game is given by.

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Yehia, M., AlTawy, R., Gulliver, T.A. (2021). Verifiable Obtained Random Subsets for Improving SPHINCS+. In: Baek, J., Ruj, S. (eds) Information Security and Privacy. ACISP 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13083. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90567-5_35

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90567-5_35

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