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DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2026.62

Improved Rate for Non-Malleable Codes and Time-Lock Puzzles

Authors: Cody Freitag, Ilan Komargodski, Manu Kondapaneni, and Jad Silbak

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 362, 17th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2026)

Abstract

Non-malleable codes allow a sender to transmit a message to a receiver, while providing a "best-possible" integrity guarantee to ensure that no attacker - who cannot already decode the message - can meaningfully tamper the message in transit. If tampered, the received message should either be invalid or unrelated to the original message. Non-malleable time-lock puzzles (TLPs) are a special case of non-malleable codes for bounded polynomial-depth tampering with very efficient encoding. In this work, we give generic techniques for constructing non-malleable codes and non-malleable TLPs with improved rate, which captures the ratio of a message’s length to its encoding length. A key contribution of our work is identifying a security notion for non-malleability, which we term "CCA-hiding", sufficient for our compilers. CCA-hiding is a relaxation of CCA-security for encryption or commitments to the fine-grained setting of codes, and requires that the encoded message remains hidden, even given a decoding oracle for any other codeword. Intriguingly, CCA-hiding does not imply non-malleability in the fine-grained setting, as is the case for encryption and commitments. Using our new techniques, we give the following constructions: - Rate-1 CCA-hiding TLPs in the plain model. - Rate-1 non-malleable codes for bounded polynomial-depth tampering in the auxiliary-input random oracle model (AI-ROM). - Rate-(1/2) non-malleable TLPs in the AI-ROM.

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Cody Freitag, Ilan Komargodski, Manu Kondapaneni, and Jad Silbak. Improved Rate for Non-Malleable Codes and Time-Lock Puzzles. In 17th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 362, pp. 62:1-62:24, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{freitag_et_al:LIPIcs.ITCS.2026.62,
  author =	{Freitag, Cody and Komargodski, Ilan and Kondapaneni, Manu and Silbak, Jad},
  title =	{{Improved Rate for Non-Malleable Codes and Time-Lock Puzzles}},
  booktitle =	{17th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2026)},
  pages =	{62:1--62:24},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-410-9},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{362},
  editor =	{Saraf, Shubhangi},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2026.62},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-253490},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2026.62},
  annote =	{Keywords: Non-malleable codes, Time-lock puzzles}
}

Document

DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ITC.2023.4

The Cost of Statistical Security in Proofs for Repeated Squaring

Authors: Cody Freitag and Ilan Komargodski

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 267, 4th Conference on Information-Theoretic Cryptography (ITC 2023)

Abstract

In recent years, the number of applications of the repeated squaring assumption has been growing rapidly. The assumption states that, given a group element x, an integer T, and an RSA modulus N, it is hard to compute x^2^T mod N - or even decide whether y?=x^2^T mod N - in parallel time less than the trivial approach of simply computing T squares. This rise has been driven by efficient proof systems for repeated squaring, opening the door to more efficient constructions of verifiable delay functions, various secure computation primitives, and proof systems for more general languages. In this work, we study the complexity of statistically sound proofs for the repeated squaring relation. Technically, we consider proofs where the prover sends at most k ≥ 0 elements and the (probabilistic) verifier performs generic group operations over the group ℤ_N^⋆. As our main contribution, we show that for any (one-round) proof with a randomized verifier (i.e., an MA proof) the verifier either runs in parallel time Ω(T/(k+1)) with high probability, or is able to factor N given the proof provided by the prover. This shows that either the prover essentially sends p,q such that N = p⋅ q (which is infeasible or undesirable in most applications), or a variant of Pietrzak’s proof of repeated squaring (ITCS 2019) has optimal verifier complexity O(T/(k+1)). In particular, it is impossible to obtain a statistically sound one-round proof of repeated squaring with efficiency on par with the computationally-sound protocol of Wesolowski (EUROCRYPT 2019), with a generic group verifier. We further extend our one-round lower bound to a natural class of recursive interactive proofs for repeated squaring. For r-round recursive proofs where the prover is allowed to send k group elements per round, we show that the verifier either runs in parallel time Ω(T/(k+1)^r) with high probability, or is able to factor N given the proof transcript.

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Cody Freitag and Ilan Komargodski. The Cost of Statistical Security in Proofs for Repeated Squaring. In 4th Conference on Information-Theoretic Cryptography (ITC 2023). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 267, pp. 4:1-4:23, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2023)

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@InProceedings{freitag_et_al:LIPIcs.ITC.2023.4,
  author =	{Freitag, Cody and Komargodski, Ilan},
  title =	{{The Cost of Statistical Security in Proofs for Repeated Squaring}},
  booktitle =	{4th Conference on Information-Theoretic Cryptography (ITC 2023)},
  pages =	{4:1--4:23},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-271-6},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2023},
  volume =	{267},
  editor =	{Chung, Kai-Min},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ITC.2023.4},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-183326},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ITC.2023.4},
  annote =	{Keywords: Cryptographic Proofs, Repeated Squaring, Lower Bounds}
}

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Improved Rate for Non-Malleable Codes and Time-Lock Puzzles

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The Cost of Statistical Security in Proofs for Repeated Squaring

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