A New Protocol for Conditional Disclosure of Secrets and Its Applications

Many protocols that are based on homomorphic encryption are private only if a client submits inputs from a limited range S. Conditional disclosure of secrets (CDS) helps to overcome this restriction. In a CDS protocol for a set S, the client obtains server’s secret if and only if the client’s inputs belong to S and thus the server can guard itself against malformed queries. We extend the existing CDS protocols to work over additively homomorphic cryptosystems for every set from NP/poly. The new construction is modular and easy to apply. As an example, we derive a new oblivious transfer protocol with log-squared communication and a millionaire’s protocol with logarithmic communication. We also implement private, universally verifiable and robust multi-candidate electronic voting so that all voters only transmit an encryption of their vote. The only hardness assumption in all these protocols is that the underlying public-key cryptosystem is IND-CPA secure and the plaintext order d...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: ACNS
• Authors: Sven Laur, Helger Lipmaa
• Keywords: ACNS 2007, CDS Protocols, Conditional Disclosure, Cryptography, Homomorphic Encryption