Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) allow proving a statement's correctness without revealing anything else, enabling privacy in applications like blockchains and digital voting. Recently, Zero-knowledge Succinct Non-interactive Arguments of Knowledge (zk-SNARKs) have helped address ZKPs' scalability challenges and gained significant attention. This paper presents a novel scalable FPGA architecture for accelerating the zk-SNARK prover's compute-intensive multi-scalar multiplication (MSM) operation. The architecture exploits MSM's inherent parallelism, using optimized IP for modular arithmetic. Implemented with Intel OneAPI for FPGAs, it achieves 110x-150x speedup over software for the BLS12-381 and BN128 elliptic curves, utilizing a generic Jacobian coordinate system.

A hybrid encryption scheme consists of a public-key part called the key encapsulation mechanism (KEM), that is used to generate and establish a shared secret key between two parties, and a (symmetric) secret-key part called the data encapsulation mechanism (DEM) that encrypts the data using the shared key. Hybrid encryption schemes are widely used for securing Internet communication. In this paper, we initiate the study of hybrid encryption in preprocessing model which assumes access to initial correlated variables by all parties (including the eavesdropper), and define information-theoretic KEM (iKEM) that together with a (computationally) secure DEM, results in a hybrid encryption scheme in preprocessing model. We define security of each building block, and prove a composition theorem that guarantees (computational) q-chosen-plaintext attack (CPA) security of the hybrid encryption system if the iKEM and the DEM satisfy q-chosen-encapsulation attack security and one-time security, respectively. We show that an iKEM can be realized by an information-theoretic one-way secret key agreement (OW-SKA) protocol where a single message is transmitted from Alice to Bob, with a new security definition that allows$q$queries to Alice. Using a OW-SKA that satisfies this new definition of security, effectively allows the established secret key to be used with a onetime symmetric key encryption system that can be implemented, for example, by XORing the output of a (computationally) secure pseudorandom generator with the message, to provide secure encryption of$q$arbitrary messages (polynomially bounded length). We discuss our results and directions for future work.

A hybrid encryption scheme uses a key encapsulation mechanism (KEM) to generate and establish a shared secret key with the decrypter, and a secret key data encapsulation mechanism (DEM) to encrypt the data using the key that is established by the DEM. The decrypter recovers the key using the ciphertext that is generated by the KEM, and uses it to decrypt the ciphertext that is generated by the DEM.We motivate and propose hybrid encryption in correlated randomness model where all participants including the eavesdropper, have access to samples of their respective correlated random variables. We define information-theoretic KEM (iKEM), and prove a composition theorem for iKEM and DEM that allows us to construct an efficient hybrid encryption system in correlated randomness model, providing post-quantum security. The construction uses an information-theoretic one-way secret key agreement (OW-SKA) protocol that satisfies a new security definition, and a one-time symmetric key encryption system that can be implemented by XORing the output of a (computationally) secure pseudorandom generator with the message. We discuss our results and directions for future work.

We study the problem of secure communication over a wiretap channel when the sender and the receiver have access to a shared secret key. We propose a modular secure construction of wiretap codes for a shared key setting that achieves secrecy capacity for weakly symmetric wiretap channels, and has computationally efficient encoding and decoding. The construction's security and reliability guarantees are in terms of semantic security, which is the strongest notion of security for these channels, and worst case error, respectively. We give concrete parameters of the construction for finite length messages to obtain a desired level of security and reliability.

Post-quantum secure communication has attracted much interest in recent years. Known computationally secure post-quantum key agreement protocols are resource intensive for small devices. These devices may need to securely send frequent short messages, for example to report the measurement of a sensor. Secure communication using physical assumptions provides information-theoretic security (and so quantum-safe) with small computational over-head. Security and efficiency analysis of these systems however is asymptotic. In this poster we consider two secure message communication systems, and derive and compare their security and efficiency for finite length messages. Our results show that these systems indeed provide an attractive alternative for post-quantum security.

Key agreement using physical layer properties of communication channels is a well studied problem. iJam is a physical layer key agreement protocol that achieves security by creating a “virtual” wiretap channel for the adversary through a subprotocol between the sender and the receiver that uses self-jamming by the receiver. The protocol was implemented and its security was shown through extensive experiments. The self-jamming subprotocol of iJam was later modelled as a wiretap channel and used for designing a secure message transmission protocol with provable security. We use the same wiretap model of the subprotocol to design secret key agreement protocols with provable security. We propose two protocols that use the wiretap channel once from Alice to Bob, and a protocol that uses two wiretap channels, one from Alice to Bob, and one in the opposite direction. We provide security proof and efficiency analysis for the protocols. The protocols effectively give physical layer security protocols that can be implemented and have provable security. We discuss our results and propose directions for future research.

In traditional game theory, the players play with policy of maximizing their payoffs. In real world, there are many situations where payoffs have uncertainty and are fuzzy in nature. In this paper, a new method for finding pure strategy Nash equilibriums, to realistically analyze the games with fuzzy payoffs is investigated. Using ranking fuzzy numbers, a fuzzy preference relation is constructed over payoffs. The priorities of payoffs are considered as the degree of being Nash equilibriums.