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Towards Security Notions for White-Box Cryptography

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Information Security (ISC 2009)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 5735))

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Abstract

While code obfuscation attempts to hide certain characteristics of a program independently of an application, white-box cryptography (WBC) specifically focuses on software implementations of cryptographic primitives in an application. The aim of WBC is to resist attacks from an adversary having access to some ‘executable’ code with an embedded secret key. WBC, if possible, would have several applications. However, unlike obfuscation, it lacks a theoretical foundation. We present a first step towards a theoretical model of WBC via white-box security notions. We also present some positive and negative results on WBC and obfuscation. In particular, we show that for most interesting programs (such as an encryption algorithm), there are security notions that cannot be satisfied when the adversary has white-box access, while they are satisfied when it has black-box access. On the positive side, we show that there exists an obfuscator for a symmetric encryption scheme in the context of a useful security-notion (such as IND-CPA).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. International University in Germany, Bruchsal, 76646, Germany

    Amitabh Saxena

  2. Katholieke Universiteit Leuven – ESAT / COSIC-IBBT, Kasteelpark Arenberg 10, 3001, Heverlee, Belgium

    Brecht Wyseur & Bart Preneel

Authors
  1. Amitabh Saxena
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  2. Brecht Wyseur
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  3. Bart Preneel
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Tecnologie dell’ Informazione, Università degli Studi di Milano, Via Bramante 65, 26013, Crema, (CR), Italy

    Pierangela Samarati

  2. Computer Science Department, Google Inc. and Columbia University, Room 464, S.W. Mudd Building, 10027, New York, NY, USA

    Moti Yung

  3. Information Security Group, Pisa Research Area, Istituto di Informatica e Telematica - IIT Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche - C.N.R., Via. G. Moruzzi 1, 56125, Pisa, Italy

    Fabio Martinelli

  4. Dipartimento di Tecnologie dell’Informazione, Università degli Studi di Milano, Via Bramante, 65, 26013, Crema, (CR), Italy

    Claudio A. Ardagna

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Saxena, A., Wyseur, B., Preneel, B. (2009). Towards Security Notions for White-Box Cryptography. In: Samarati, P., Yung, M., Martinelli, F., Ardagna, C.A. (eds) Information Security. ISC 2009. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5735. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-04474-8_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-04474-8_4

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-04473-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-04474-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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