Round 1 (Additional Signatures) OFFICIAL COMMENT: EagleSign-V2, A New improvement of EagleSign with Zero Knowledge property

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Abiodoun HOUNKPEVI

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Dec 10, 2023, 9:01:58 AM12/10/23
to pqc-...@list.nist.gov
Dear All,

In response to the recent attack proposed by Tibouchi on the NIST forum regarding the security of EagleSign signatures here, we have undertaken significant enhancements to fortify the protocol against the proposed attack (A similaire attack is described in Agrawal, S., Stehlé, D., & Yadav, A. Round-optimal lattice-based threshold signatures, revisited. Cryptology ePrint Archive 2022 \textit{https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/634}) .

The updated package is available through the link here.

The vulnerabilities identified, particularly in the leakage of the secret key within signature elements, have been addressed through the implementation of two key techniques:

1. Change of the particular Public Key:

 To bolster the security of EagleSign, we have revised the public key generation process. Our general public key was   E = (AF^{-1} + D)·G^{-1}  (zere G is a matrix or a polynomial) but for efficiency we have chosen E = (A + D)·G^{-1} as the public key in our particular instantiation in EagleSign submitted to NIST. Now, the modification involves transitioning from the previous formulation E = (A + D)·G^{-1} to a more resilient expression E = (A·F + D)·g^{-1} where A represents the public matrix generated from a seed, g represents a sparse and small invertible polynomial, D represents a sparse and small polynomial matrix, F is an invertible, small, and uniformly generated polynomial matrix,  This adjustment aims to be able to change the mathematical formulas of the signature and introduce rejection sampling in order mitigate the specific vulnerability associated with the short matrix part G of the secret key.

2. Change in the Signature:
 2.1 Change of the mathematical formulas:
 The signature generation process has undergone a fundamental change to counteract potential attacks. We have moved from the susceptible equation z = G·(y_1 + c) to a more secure formulation: z = g·(y + F·c). Here, y is a randomly generated vector in a very large interval, and c is a challenge vector consisting of small values.

2.2  Introduction of Rejection Sampling Method:
   To further control the size of the signature and mitigate potential threats, we have integrated the rejection sampling method proposed by Lyubachevski. This method allows for the selective rejection of certain signatures, enhancing overall security.

Conclusion
These alterations disrupt the linear relationship between key components and enhance resistance to statistical techniques since z does not depend on g anymore, but instead on y which is randomly chosen. Since then, our signature does not leak private keys, hence we have the zero knowledge property as desired.
These strategic modifications collectively address the concerns raised by Tibouchi and significantly strengthen the security posture of EagleSign-V2.

The result of these is that the modulus q increases, hence the size of the public key is more big but the size of the signature is similar to those of Dilithium..

To reduce the size of the public key we are working now on a new variant . The old variant  is being implemented over $R_q=\dfrac{\mathbb{Z}_q (X)}{(X^n+1)}$ with $n=1024, 2048$ in order to make NTT easy to use. To reduce the size of the public key one can choose the ring $R_q=\dfrac{\mathbb{Z}_q (X)}{(X^n+X^{n/2}-1)}$  with $n=768, 1536$ (where we can use also NTT), this ring is studied in "Duman, J., Hövelmanns, K., Kiltz, E., Lyubashevsky, V., Seiler, G., Unruh, D. (2023). \emph{A Thorough Treatment of Highly-Efficient NTRU Instantiations}. In: Boldyreva, A., Kolesnikov, V. (eds) Public-Key Cryptography – PKC 2023. PKC 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13940. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31368-4\_ 3"

Best regards,

On  behalf of EagleSign Team,
Clement HOUNKPEVI

Mehdi Tibouchi

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Dec 10, 2023, 12:27:40 PM12/10/23
to Abiodoun HOUNKPEVI, pqc-...@list.nist.gov
Dear submitters, dear all,

Unless I am missing something, the updated scheme can be broken as
follows.

First, note that there is again no modular reduction in the computation
of u = y + Fc and z = gu, since all the elements involved are small. So
these are equalities over the ring.

As a result, the ideal gR can easily be recovered as the sum of the
ideals zR for the values z in a handful of signatures. Then, g can be
recovered (up to a root of unity) in various ways. I'm sure one can think
of better approaches, but meet-in-the-middle attacks are sufficient to
break the security claims in view of the the very low entropy: for
"NIST-2" parameters, the entropy is only ~ 2^56 after quotienting by
roots of unity, so the complexity of MitM is only ~ 2^28 for the most
naive approach (similarly for "NIST-5", the numbers are ~ 2^123 and ~
2^62).

Once g is recovered, a statistical attack on u recovers F (note that the
rejection sampling does not work as stated due to the fact that, for w in
S_{t_g B}, it is not the case that g^{-1}w is necessarily in S_{B}, and
hence the argument of section 3.2 is flawed), and thus the entire key.

The scheme can probably be fixed by replacing the signature generation
again by a proper variant of Lyubashevsky'12, but at that point it would
presumably just be a less efficient version of ML-DSA, so I fail to get
the selling point.

Best regards,

--
M. Tibouchi
<mehdi.t...@normalesup.org>
http://www.normalesup.org/~tibouchi/
************************************************************
NTT Social Informatics Laboratories
Abe Research Laboratory
3-9-11 Midori-cho, Musashino-shi, Tokyo, 180-8585, Japan.
************************************************************


On Sun, Dec 10, 2023 at 03:01:40PM +0100, Abiodoun HOUNKPEVI wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> In response to the recent attack proposed by Tibouchi on the NIST forum
> regarding the security of EagleSign signatures here
> <https://groups.google.com/a/list.nist.gov/g/pqc-forum/c/zas5PLiBe6A/m/A2KSHtqUAgAJ>,
> we have undertaken significant enhancements to fortify the protocol against
> the proposed attack (A similaire attack is described in Agrawal, S.,
> Stehlé, D., & Yadav, A. Round-optimal lattice-based threshold signatures,
> revisited. *Cryptology ePrint Archive 2022 *\textit{
> https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/634}) .
>
> The updated package is available through the link here
> <https://github.com/eaglesignteam/eaglesign_v2>.
>
> The vulnerabilities identified, particularly in the leakage of the secret
> key within signature elements, have been addressed through the
> implementation of two key techniques:
>
> 1. *Change of the particular Public Key*:
>
> To bolster the security of EagleSign, we have revised the public key
> generation process. Our general public key was E = (AF^{-1} + D)·G^{-1}
> (zere G is a matrix or a polynomial) but for efficiency we have chosen E =
> (A + D)·G^{-1} as the public key in our particular instantiation in
> EagleSign submitted to NIST. Now, the modification involves transitioning
> from the previous formulation E = (A + D)·G^{-1} to a more resilient
> expression E = (A·F + D)·g^{-1} where A represents the public matrix
> generated from a seed, g represents a sparse and small invertible
> polynomial, D represents a sparse and small polynomial matrix, F is an
> invertible, small, and uniformly generated polynomial matrix, This
> adjustment aims to be able to change the mathematical formulas of the
> signature and introduce rejection sampling in order mitigate the specific
> vulnerability associated with the short matrix part G of the secret key.
>
> 2. *Change in the Signature:*
> * 2.1 Change of the mathematical formulas*:
> The signature generation process has undergone a fundamental change to
> counteract potential attacks. We have moved from the susceptible equation z
> = G·(y_1 + c) to a more secure formulation: z = g·(y + F·c). Here, y is a
> randomly generated vector in a very large interval, and c is a challenge
> vector consisting of small values.
>
> 2.2 *Introduction of Rejection Sampling Method:*
> To further control the size of the signature and mitigate potential
> threats, we have integrated the rejection sampling method proposed by
> Lyubachevski. This method allows for the selective rejection of certain
> signatures, enhancing overall security.
>
>
> *Conclusion*
> --
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Mehdi Tibouchi

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Dec 13, 2023, 2:57:27 AM12/13/23
to Abiodoun HOUNKPEVI, pqc-...@list.nist.gov
Dear submitters, dear all,

Regarding the attack below, let me be a bit more precise.

A simple observation is that the rejection condition:

|z|_\infty >= t_g (gamma_1 - beta)

is essentially never triggered, as can be immediately verified on the
provided implementation. This is because the coefficients of the
"randomness term" in z = g·u, namely g·y, are distributed like sums of
t_g samples from the uniform distribution in [-gamma_1, gamma_1], and
therefore concentrate a lot more around 0 than the uniform distribution
in [-t_g·gamma, t_g·gamma].

As a result, the newly introduced rejection sampling basically doesn't
affect the distribution. (The other two rejection conditions can be
triggered, but aren't really relevant to the behavior of z, since E_s
looks uniform mod q). This means that the statistically attack on the
previous version of EagleSign applies without modification to the new
scheme, but instead recovers gF, and after than DF = E_s gF - A.

This is sufficient to show that the claimed HVZK property doesn't hold.
For a full key recovery, one can do as suggested below, and carry out
a meet-in-the-middle attack on g, which combined with the previous
elements reveals the entire key.

Best regards,

--
Mehdi.

djiby sow

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Dec 21, 2023, 2:22:27 PM12/21/23
to Mehdi Tibouchi, Abiodoun HOUNKPEVI, pqc-...@list.nist.gov
Dear all
,Dear tibouchi, your security analysis of EagleSgn is wonderful. Your hard work allows us to improve prograssively our submission to NIST.

Dear all, we agree with Tibouchi that the formula used in the signature (not the public key) contains a flaw. Tibouchi remarks that the deal $\mathbf{G}R_q$ can be easily recovered as the sum of the ideals $\mathbf{Z}R_q$ for the values $\mathbf{Z}$ in a handful of signature" and therefore $\mathbf{G}$ can be recovered. This fact induce also a flaw in the section 3.2 for the zero knowledge propertry.
Currently we are working to modify slightly the formula of the signature to circumvent these weakness. The new variant will be available in few days.
Best regards
On behalf of EagleSign team
Pr djiby  Sow

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