Score:1

IND-CPA secure PKE from search problem

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user4936

Is there any PKE scheme that is IND-CPA secure (in a standard model, not RO) under a search problem?

Marc Ilunga avatar
tr flag
Some examples could be Probably the basic ElGamal (based on DDH), Cramer-Shoup or even (DH-EC)IES.
Marc Ilunga avatar
tr flag
Is the question intended to be on PKE based on CDH? Because AFAIK, DDH is a well-defined computational problem (of the decision kind).
Marc Ilunga avatar
tr flag
That's a qualitatively different question, then :). In which case, Mark's answer is best suited.
Score:2
ng flag

First, I would like to second that nearly all of cryptography is based on "computational" decision problems. It sounds like you want cryptography based on (computational still) search problems. Cryptography not based on computational problems exists as well (for example the one-time pad), but generally has severely limited applicability for efficiency reasons.

As for cryptography based on search problems, there are some natural candidates. Namely, if one pairs

  1. cryptography based on some decision problem $D$, and
  2. a "search to decision" reduction involving that problem $D$

then you can get cryptography based on a search problem. If such a reduction existed between CDH and DDH, it would answer your question.

Such reductions do exist in lattice-based cryptography, at least in parts. So one can in principle take some lattice-based cryptosystem (defined relative to the decision variant of LWE) and then apply a search-to-decision reduction to obtain a cryptosystem based on the search variant of LWE. This seems morally similar to me to the setting of starting with a cryptosystem defined relative to DDH and then getting a cryptosystem defined relative to CDH, which is what you alluded to wanting.

Anyway, for plain LWE these exist, see for example this paper. For RLWE they exist as well, but are somewhat more complex/limited iirc. I won't bother looking for details, because one can concretely simply combine the above paper with an LWE-based PKE scheme, for example FrodoKEM, to answer your question.

Score:1
tr flag

Some examples I can think of:

  1. ElGamal: At least the basic version, where encryption is somewhat of an "OTP" in the group. Without random oracles, its CPA security can be shown under the DDH assumption.
  2. Cramer-Shoup: Shown to be actually CCA secure under DDH as well.
  3. DHIES, DHEAS, ECIES: Shown CPA secure assuming the underlying symmetric scheme is CPA secure and that the Hash-DH assumption holds.
  4. The combination of a CPA-secure KEM and a CPA-secure DEM gives a CPA secure PKE. I suppose as long as the security of the KEM does not depend on the random oracle then, such instantiations would also be examples?
Marc Ilunga avatar
tr flag
@tinker, that's a distinction I haven't seen in the literature. A decision problem is still a computational problem with well-defined problem instances and solutions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_problem. Do you have any links to that literature using that distinction?
cn flag
@tinker what you call "computational problem" is usually referred to as a "search problem". The computational in computational assumption refers to the fact that the algorithm is computationally constrained.
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