We formalize the simulation paradigm of cryptography in terms of category theory and show that protocols secure against abstract attacks form a symmetric monoidal category, thus giving an abstract model of composable security definitions in cryptography. Our model is able to incorporate computational security, set-up assumptions and various attack models such as colluding or independently acting subsets of adversaries in a modular, flexible fashion. We conclude by using string diagrams to rederive the security of the one-time pad, correctness of Diffie-Hellman key exchange and no-go results concerning the limits of bipartite and tripartite cryptography, ruling out e.g., composable commitments and broadcasting. On the way, we exhibit two categorical constructions of resource theories that might be of independent interest: one capturing resources shared among multiple parties and one capturing resource conversions that succeed asymptotically.

Abstract We formalize the simulation paradigm of cryptography in terms of category theory and show that protocols secure against abstract attacks form a symmetric monoidal category, thus giving an abstract model of composable security definitions in cryptography. Our model is able to incorporate computational security, set-up assumptions and various attack models such as colluding or independently acting subsets of adversaries in a modular, flexible fashion. We conclude by using string diagrams to rederive the security of the one-time pad and no-go results concerning the limits of bipartite and tripartite cryptography, ruling out e.g., composable commitments and broadcasting.

We study simulation and quantum resources in the setting of the sheaf-theoretic approach to contextuality and nonlocality. Resources are viewed behaviourally, as empirical models. In earlier work, a notion of morphism for these empirical models was proposed and studied. We generalize and simplify the earlier approach, by starting with a very simple notion of morphism, and then extending it to a more useful one by passing to a co-Kleisli category with respect to a comonad of measurement protocols. We show that these morphisms capture notions of simulation between empirical models obtained via “free” operations in a resource theory of contextuality, including the type of classical control used in measurement-based quantum computation schemes.