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DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2020.36

Computationally Data-Independent Memory Hard Functions

Authors: Mohammad Hassan Ameri, Jeremiah Blocki, and Samson Zhou

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 151, 11th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2020)

Abstract

Memory hard functions (MHFs) are an important cryptographic primitive that are used to design egalitarian proofs of work and in the construction of moderately expensive key-derivation functions resistant to brute-force attacks. Broadly speaking, MHFs can be divided into two categories: data-dependent memory hard functions (dMHFs) and data-independent memory hard functions (iMHFs). iMHFs are resistant to certain side-channel attacks as the memory access pattern induced by the honest evaluation algorithm is independent of the potentially sensitive input e.g., password. While dMHFs are potentially vulnerable to side-channel attacks (the induced memory access pattern might leak useful information to a brute-force attacker), they can achieve higher cumulative memory complexity (CMC) in comparison than an iMHF. In particular, any iMHF that can be evaluated in N steps on a sequential machine has CMC at most ?((N^2 log log N)/log N). By contrast, the dMHF scrypt achieves maximal CMC Ω(N^2) - though the CMC of scrypt would be reduced to just ?(N) after a side-channel attack. In this paper, we introduce the notion of computationally data-independent memory hard functions (ciMHFs). Intuitively, we require that memory access pattern induced by the (randomized) ciMHF evaluation algorithm appears to be independent from the standpoint of a computationally bounded eavesdropping attacker - even if the attacker selects the initial input. We then ask whether it is possible to circumvent known upper bound for iMHFs and build a ciMHF with CMC Ω(N^2). Surprisingly, we answer the question in the affirmative when the ciMHF evaluation algorithm is executed on a two-tiered memory architecture (RAM/Cache). We introduce the notion of a k-restricted dynamic graph to quantify the continuum between unrestricted dMHFs (k=n) and iMHFs (k=1). For any ε > 0 we show how to construct a k-restricted dynamic graph with k=Ω(N^(1-ε)) that provably achieves maximum cumulative pebbling cost Ω(N^2). We can use k-restricted dynamic graphs to build a ciMHF provided that cache is large enough to hold k hash outputs and the dynamic graph satisfies a certain property that we call "amenable to shuffling". In particular, we prove that the induced memory access pattern is indistinguishable to a polynomial time attacker who can monitor the locations of read/write requests to RAM, but not cache. We also show that when k=o(N^(1/log log N)) , then any k-restricted graph with constant indegree has cumulative pebbling cost o(N^2). Our results almost completely characterize the spectrum of k-restricted dynamic graphs.

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Mohammad Hassan Ameri, Jeremiah Blocki, and Samson Zhou. Computationally Data-Independent Memory Hard Functions. In 11th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2020). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 151, pp. 36:1-36:28, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2020)

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@InProceedings{ameri_et_al:LIPIcs.ITCS.2020.36,
  author =	{Ameri, Mohammad Hassan and Blocki, Jeremiah and Zhou, Samson},
  title =	{{Computationally Data-Independent Memory Hard Functions}},
  booktitle =	{11th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2020)},
  pages =	{36:1--36:28},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-134-4},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2020},
  volume =	{151},
  editor =	{Vidick, Thomas},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops-dev.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2020.36},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-117214},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2020.36},
  annote =	{Keywords: Computationally Data-Independent Memory Hard Function, Cumulative Memory Complexity, Dynamic Pebbling Game}
}

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1 Search Results for "Ameri, Mohammad Hassan"

Computationally Data-Independent Memory Hard Functions

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