Encapsulation Mechanism Research Articles

Fast polynomial inversion for post quantum QC-MDPC cryptography

New post-quantum Key Encapsulation Mechanism (KEM) designs, evaluated as part of the NIST PQC standardization Project, pose challenging tradeoffs between communication bandwidth and computational overheads. Several KEM designs evaluated in Round-2 of the project are based on QC-MDPC codes. BIKE-2 uses the smallest communication bandwidth, but its key generation requires a costly polynomial inversion. In this paper, we provide details on the optimized polynomial inversion algorithm for QC-MDPC codes (originally proposed in the conference version of this work). This algorithm makes the runtime of BIKE-2 key generation tolerable. It brings a speedup of 11.4× over the commonly used NTL library, and 83.5× over OpenSSL. We achieve additional speedups by leveraging the latest Intel's Vector-PCLMULQDQ instructions, 14.3× over NTL and 103.9× over OpenSSL. Our algorithm and implementation were the reason that BIKE team chose BIKE-2 as the only scheme for its Round-3 specification (now called BIKE).

Masking Kyber: First- and Higher-Order Implementations

In the final phase of the post-quantum cryptography standardization effort, the focus has been extended to include the side-channel resistance of the candidates. While some schemes have been already extensively analyzed in this regard, there is no such study yet of the finalist Kyber.In this work, we demonstrate the first completely masked implementation of Kyber which is protected against first- and higher-order attacks. To the best of our knowledge, this results in the first higher-order masked implementation of any post-quantum secure key encapsulation mechanism algorithm. This is realized by introducing two new techniques. First, we propose a higher-order algorithm for the one-bit compression operation. This is based on a masked bit-sliced binary-search that can be applied to prime moduli. Second, we propose a technique which enables one to compare uncompressed masked polynomials with compressed public polynomials. This avoids the costly masking of the ciphertext compression while being able to be instantiated at arbitrary orders.We show performance results for first-, second- and third-order protected implementations on the Arm Cortex-M0+ and Cortex-M4F. Notably, our implementation of first-order masked Kyber decapsulation requires 3.1 million cycles on the Cortex-M4F. This is a factor 3.5 overhead compared to the unprotected optimized implementationin pqm4. We experimentally show that the first-order implementation of our new modules on the Cortex-M0+ is hardened against attacks using 100 000 traces and mechanically verify the security in a fine-grained leakage model using the verification tool scVerif.

Molecular dynamics simulations of quinine encapsulation into biodegradable nanoparticles: A possible new strategy against Sars-CoV-2

A new coronavirus disease, SARS-CoV-2, has spread into a global pandemic in December 2019. Since no specific therapeutic drugs for treating COVID‐19 have been approved by FDA, recent studies suggest that the known antimalarial quinine and its derivatives (chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine) inhibit receptor binding of the viral particles and inhibits the strong “cytokine storm”, which is the main cause of death among infected patients. In particular, the natural alkaloid quinine has shown to possess a better safety profile and greater tolerability compared to its derivatives. Dosage optimization of quinine is still necessary as the currently available dosage forms have controversial pharmacokinetics and safety profiles. Therefore, repurposing quinine dosage forms to improve its pharmacokinetics and safety profile may be necessary to support its use against SARS-CoV-2. In this context, biodegradable/biocompatible polymeric nanoparticles may provide a safe site-specific and controlled quinine delivery, reducing the frequency of drug administration and the dose.In this study, a full atomistic molecular dynamics simulation approach has been used to investigate the use of poly-(glycolic acid) and poly-(lactic acid) and their copolymer poly-(lactic-co-glycolic acid) as potential delivery systems for lipophilic quinine to get insights into the mechanism of quinine encapsulation and release at the atomic/molecular level.

Encapsulation of Aromatic Guests in the Bisporphyrin Cavity of a Double-Stranded Spiroborate Helicate: Thermodynamic and Kinetic Studies and the Encapsulation Mechanism.

A double-stranded spiroborate helicate bearing a bisporphyrin unit in the middle forms an inclusion complex with electron-deficient aromatic guests that are sandwiched between the porphyrins. In the present study, we systematically investigated the effects of size, electron density, and substituents of a series of aromatic guests on inclusion complex formations within the bisporphyrin. The thermodynamic and kinetic behaviors during the guest-encapsulation process were also investigated in detail. The guest-encapsulation abilities in the helicate increased with the increasing core sizes of the electron-deficient aromatic guests and decreased with the increasing bulkiness and number of substituents of the guests. Among the naphthalenediimide derivatives, those with bulky N-substituents at both ends hardly formed an inclusion complex. Instead, they formed a [2]rotaxane-like inclusion complex through the water-mediated dynamic B-O bond cleavage/reformation of the spiroborate groups of the helicate, which enhanced the conformational flexibility of the helicate to enlarge the bisporphyrin cavity and form an inclusion complex. Based on the X-ray crystal structure of a unique pacman-like 1:1 inclusion complex between the helicate and an ammonium cation as well as the molecular dynamics simulation results, a plausible mechanism for the inclusion of a planar aromatic guest within the helicate is also proposed.

Attacking and Defending Masked Polynomial Comparison for Lattice-Based Cryptography

In this work, we are concerned with the hardening of post-quantum key encapsulation mechanisms (KEM) against side-channel attacks, with a focus on the comparison operation required for the Fujisaki-Okamoto (FO) transform. We identify critical vulnerabilities in two proposals for masked comparison and successfully attack the masked comparison algorithms from TCHES 2018 and TCHES 2020. To do so, we use first-order side-channel attacks and show that the advertised security properties do not hold. Additionally, we break the higher-order secured masked comparison from TCHES 2020 using a collision attack, which does not require side-channel information. To enable implementers to spot such flaws in the implementation or underlying algorithms, we propose a framework that is designed to test the re-encryption step of the FO transform for information leakage. Our framework relies on a specifically parametrized t-test and would have identified the previously mentioned flaws in the masked comparison. Our framework can be used to test both the comparison itself and the full decapsulation implementation.

Optimizing BIKE for the Intel Haswell and ARM Cortex-M4

BIKE is a key encapsulation mechanism that entered the third round of the NIST post-quantum cryptography standardization process. This paper presents two constant-time implementations for BIKE, one tailored for the Intel Haswell and one tailored for the ARM Cortex-M4. Our Haswell implementation is much faster than the avx2 implementation written by the BIKE team: for bikel1, the level-1 parameter set, we achieve a 1.39x speedup for decapsulation (which is the slowest operation) and a 1.33x speedup for the sum of all operations. For bikel3, the level-3 parameter set, we achieve a 1.5x speedup for decapsulation and a 1.46x speedup for the sum of all operations. Our M4 implementation is more than two times faster than the non-constant-time implementation portable written by the BIKE team. The speedups are achieved by both algorithm-level and instruction-level optimizations.

CCA-security from adaptive all-but-one lossy trapdoor functions

In this paper, we propose the notion of adaptive all-but-one lossy trapdoor functions (aABO-LTFs), a variant of all-but-one lossy trapdoor functions. An aABO-LTF is parameterised by a set of branches. Given the lossy branch, the function statistically loses the information of its inputs. Given injective branches, the function is injective, and there is a trapdoor that enables efficient function inversion. What differentiates an aABO-LTF and an ABO-LTF is that for an aABO-LTF, the lossy branch is indistinguishable from the other branches even if the adversary gets to ask for function inversions on any injective branches apart from the lossy branch.We demonstrate the usefulness of the adaptivity of aABO-LTFs by providing generic and efficient constructions of an adaptively chosen-ciphertext secure (CCA-secure) public-key encapsulation mechanism (KEM) and an adaptive deterministic public-key encryption (DPKE) without random oracles using aABO-LTFs in a very simple black-box way. Our constructions are direct in the sense of that it avoids generic transformations using one-time signatures or message authentication codes typically found in standard model CCA-secure constructions.Moreover, we show that aABO-LTFs can be instantiated generically by lossy trapdoor primitives, including lossy trapdoor functions (LTFs) and identity-based (lossy) trapdoor functions (IB-LTFs). We also demonstrate that the lattice-based ABO-LTFs proposed by Alwen et al. (CRYPTO'13) are aABO-LTFs. Several existing CCA-secure KEM and DPKE schemes can be described by our generic constrictions. Therefore, our work unifies these seemingly unrelated schemes and explains the design principles behind these schemes.

Processes and methods for selecting system-wide parameters and analysis of resistance against third-party channel attacks for the key encapsulation mechanism DSTU 8961:2019

In recent years, there has been significant progress in the creation of quantum computers. If scalable quantum computers are implemented in the near future, this will jeopardize the security of the most widely used public key cryptosystems. The most vulnerable are public-key schemes based on factorization, discrete logarithms and elliptic curve cryptography. Currently, the main task is to develop, evaluate, study and standardize asymmetric crypto transformations at the international level, including mechanisms of key encapsulation and directional encryption, resistant to attacks by violators of the post-quantum period. An important feature of the transition and post-quantum period is the usage of new mathematical methods to opposite quantum crypto analysis. The paper considers the main attacks on the mechanisms of key encapsulation and directional encryption, as well as system-wide parameters of the DSTU 8961: 2019 standard, which affect the resistance to attacks and the complexity of transformations. Methods for generating system-wide parameters of 5 and 7 levels of stability – 512 bits of classical and 256 bits of quantum security, as well as the protection of the algorithm from attacks by third-party channels are considered. The dependence of encryption and decryption time on the level of stability is analyzed. The results of calculations of system-wide parameters for stability levels 256/128, 384/192 and 512/256 are presented, as well as recommendations for the selection of system-wide parameters depending on the environment and computing capabilities. Sets of parameters selected and recommended for use in the DSTU 8961: 2019 standard are given. Conclusions are drawn about the possibility of applying the DSTU 8961 standard in the post-quantum period.

Research progress on polysaccharide/protein hydrogels: Preparation method, functional property and application as delivery systems for bioactive ingredients

Some bioactive ingredients in foods are unstable and easily degraded during processing, storage, transportation and digestion. To enhance the stability and bioavailability, some food hydrogels have been developed to encapsulate these unstable compounds. In this paper, the preparation methods, formation mechanisms, physicochemical and functional properties of some protein hydrogels, polysaccharide hydrogels and protein-polysaccharide composite hydrogels were comprehensively summarized. Since the hydrogels have the ability to control the release and enhance the bioavailability of bioactive ingredients, the encapsulation and release mechanisms of polyphenols, flavonoids, carotenoids, vitamins and probiotics by hydrogels were further discussed. This review will provide a comprehensive reference for the deep application of polysaccharide/protein hydrogels in food industry.

Co-benefits of biochar-supported nanoscale zero-valent iron in simultaneously stabilizing soil heavy metals and reducing their bioaccessibility

We investigated the performance and encapsulation mechanisms of novel biochar-supported nanoscale zero-valent iron (nZVI-BC) used for the remediation of soil co-contaminated with arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), and lead (Pb) via incubation and column experiments. Compared with the control, 0.50% of nZVI-BC significantly decreased the leakage of As, Cd, and Pb by 97.94–98.45%, 42.86–81.12%, and 82.14–92.49%, respectively. In addition, 0.50% of nZVI-BC could transform the fraction of unstable heavy metals into a stable form, which substantially decreased the availability, leachability, and bioaccessibility of the heavy metals and hence greatly reduced the human health exposure risk. Column experiments showed that 0.50% of nZVI-BC effectively restrained the leaching of As, Cd, and Pb by 95.60–99.84%, 70.82–84.18%, and 91.68–99.81%, respectively. The predominant encapsulation mechanisms of nZVI-BC included complexation, precipitation/co-precipitation, reduction, and the formation of ternary surface complexes. Based on these insights, we can devise new strategies for the remediation of soil co-contaminated with As, Cd, and Pb.

A Refinement of Key Mismatch Attack on NewHope

Abstract NewHope cryptosystem is one of the second-round submissions of the National Institute of Standards and Technology post-quantum cryptography standardization process, which is a suite of two key encapsulation mechanisms based on the ring-learning with errors (LWE) problem. It has received much attention from the research community due to its small key size and high efficiency. Recently, three key mismatch attacks are proposed against NewHope under the condition of key reuse. They do not solve the ring-LWE instance directly but exploit the leakage of secret information. As far as we know, the best result is given by Okada et al. ((2020) Improving Key Mismatch Attack on NewHope with Fewer Queries. In Proc. of the 25th Australasian Conf. on Information Security and Privacy, Perth, WA, Australia, November 30–December 2, pp. 505–524. Springer Cham, Switzerland), which recovers the whole secret with a success probability of $97\%$ and $233,803$ average queries. In this paper, we further improve the key mismatch attack of NewHope by reducing the average queries to $106,577$ and raising the success probability to $100\%$. Moreover, we analyze the key mismatch attack without key reuse for the first time and we propose a combinatorial attack against NewHope1024. The total complexity of the combinatorial attack is $2^{253}$, which is lower than the complexity of primal attack and the claimed security strength of NewHope1024.

The Kinetics of Dye Encapsulation in Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes Probed By Statistical Raman Imaging

Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes (SWNTs) are nanosystems with a large aspect ratio that have potential in a wide range of optical applications, such as in biomedical imaging [1]. An important advantage of SWNTs in that context is their capability to support two or more functionalities, for instance detection as well as targeting of molecules of interest. The hollowness of SWNTs interior is therefore particularly interesting since SWNTs can act as a template for the creation of new hybrid nanostructures, while leaving the surface free for further functionalization. It was shown that dyes encapsulated inside carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are protected from degradation and present a strong Raman signature with narrow emission peaks, free of background fluorescence, which could enable their use as Raman optical markers [2]. Further, confinement inside SWNTs was found to largely impact molecular organisation [3], tuning the physical and chemical properties of the encapsulated molecules. However, the kinetics of such a system, as well as the precise mechanism of aggregate formation, is still not completely understood. In this study, we explore the encapsulation mechanism of dye molecules in SWNTs. Sexithiophene (6T) molecules were chosen due to their well-conjugated, rod-like structure and giant Raman signal upon encapsulation, at an excitation of 532 nm.Raman imaging (RIMA, Raman Imaging system, Photon etc.) is used to obtain statistical information from a large number of individual SWNTs (>1000 per data point). The encapsulation is carried out using a liquid-phase protocol, allowing the investigation of the impact of various encapsulation parameters (dye concentration and temperature) on the kinetics of the encapsulation process. Spatially resolved Raman imaging allows the comparison of filling and densification speeds for all encapsulation parameters, showing that, in all studied cases, the filling is faster than densification, which occurs over longer time scales. Raman imaging also enables the tailored analysis of different sub-populations, in order to probe the effect of the length or the diameter of the SWNTs on the encapsulation kinetics. Furthermore, Raman intensity distributions are studied, which provide signatures of single and double aggregation that can be correlated to SWNTs characteristics. Finally, a kinetic model and an encapsulation mechanism are proposed. Based on the intensity distributions and the proposed kinetic model, we predict the apparition of double aggregation for all the encapsulation parameters investigated. These results provide much needed insight on aggregate formation in 1D systems, which is crucial to the development of well-behaved and controlled hybrid materials. [1] Kostarelos, K., Bianco, A., & Prato, M. (2009). Promises, facts and challenges for carbon nanotubes in imaging and therapeutics. Nature nanotechnology, 4(10), 627-633.[2] Gaufrès, E., Tang, N. W., Lapointe, F., Cabana, J., Nadon, M. A., Cottenye, N., ... & Martel, R. (2014). Giant Raman scattering from J-aggregated dyes inside carbon nanotubes for multispectral imaging. Nature Photonics, 8(1), 72-78.[3] Almadori, Y., Alvarez, L., Le Parc, R., Aznar, R., Fossard, F., Loiseau, A., ... & Rahmani, A. (2014). Chromophore ordering by confinement into carbon nanotubes. The Journal of Physical Chemistry C, 118(33), 19462-19468.

Efficient Ciphertext-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption Constructions with Outsourced Encryption and Decryption

The invention of the Ciphertext-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption scheme opened a new perspective for realizing attribute-based access control systems without being forced to trust the storage service provider, which is the case in traditional systems where data are sent to the storage service provider in clear and the storage service provider is the party that controls the access to these data. In the Ciphertext-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption model, the data owner encrypts data using an attribute-based access structure before sending them to the storage service, and only users with authorized sets of attributes can successfully decrypt the generated ciphertext. However, Ciphertext-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption schemes employ expensive operations (i.e., bilinear pairings and modular exponentiations) and generate long ciphertexts and secret keys, which makes them hard to implement in real-life applications especially for resource-constrained devices. In this paper, we propose two Ciphertext-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption Key Encapsulation Mechanisms that can be provided as services in the cloud, minimizing the user’s encryption and decryption costs without exposing any sensitive information to the public cloud provider. In the first scheme, the ABE Service Provider is considered fully untrusted. On the other hand, the second scheme requires the ABE Service Provider to be semi-trusted (Honest-but-Curious) and does not collude with illegitimate users. Both schemes are proved to be selectively CPA-secure in the random oracle. The theoretical and experimental performance results show that both our first and second schemes are more efficient than the reviewed outsourced CP-ABE schemes in terms of user-side computation, communication, and storage costs.

Folding BIKE: Scalable Hardware Implementation for Reconfigurable Devices

Contemporary digital infrastructures and systems use and trust Public-Key Cryptography to exchange keys over insecure communication channels. With the development and progress in the research field of quantum computers, well established schemes like RSA and ECC are more and more threatened. The urgent demand to find and standardize new schemes – which are secure in a post-quantum world – was also realized by the National Institute of Standards and Technology which announced a Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization Project in 2017. Recently, the round three candidates were announced and one of the alternate candidates is the Key Encapsulation Mechanism scheme BIKE. In this article, we investigate different strategies to efficiently implement the BIKE algorithm on Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). To this extend, we improve already existing polynomial multipliers, propose efficient strategies to realize polynomial inversions, and implement the Black-Gray-Flip decoder for the first time. Additionally, our implementation is designed to be scalable and generic with the BIKE specific parameters. All together, the fastest designs achieve latencies of 2.69 ms for the key generation, 0.1 ms for the encapsulation, and 1.89 ms for the decapsulation considering the lowest security level.

Review on drug delivery system for phytomedicine through mechanism of encapsulation

Review on drug delivery system for phytomedicine through mechanism of encapsulation

Review on drug delivery system for phytomedicine through mechanism of encapsulation

Natural products have limitation in the bioavailability of active components because of numbers of reasons which includes poor solubility of the ingredient, poor stability due to gastric and colonic acidity, poor metabolism by the effect of gut microflora, poor absorption across the intestinal wall, poor active efflux mechanism and first-pass metabolic effects these factors make the failure of clinical trials and efficacy of natural phytochemicals used for human consumption both in cell culture and preclinical animal model systems is distinctly addressed by various researchers. Over the past decades, extraordinary advances have been made successfully on the development of novel drug delivery systems for encapsulation of plant active metabolites including organic, inorganic and hybrid nanoparticles .Various nanosystems and advanced biotechnology systems have been introduced to improve the therapeutic efficacy, safety and market appeal of nutraceuticals and phytochemicals, including liposomes, polymeric micelles, nanoparticles, and phytosomes. The advanced formulas are confirmed to have extraordinary benefits over conventional and previously used systems in the manner of solubility, bioavailability, toxicity, pharmacological activity, stability, distribution, sustained delivery, and both physical and chemical degradation.

LIGA: a cryptosystem based on the hardness of rank-metric list and interleaved decoding

We propose the new rank-metric code-based cryptosystem LIGA which is based on the hardness of list decoding and interleaved decoding of Gabidulin codes. LIGA is an improved variant of the Faure–Loidreau (FL) system, which was broken in a structural attack by Gaborit, Otmani, and Talé Kalachi (GOT, 2018). We keep the FL encryption and decryption algorithms, but modify the insecure key generation algorithm. Our crucial observation is that the GOT attack is equivalent to decoding an interleaved Gabidulin code. The new key generation algorithm constructs public keys for which all polynomial-time interleaved decoders fail—hence LIGA resists the GOT attack. We also prove that the public-key encryption version of LIGA is IND-CPA secure in the standard model and the key encapsulation mechanisms version is IND-CCA2 secure in the random oracle model, both under hardness assumptions of formally defined problems related to list decoding and interleaved decoding of Gabidulin codes. We propose and analyze various exponential-time attacks on these problems, calculate their work factors, and compare the resulting parameters to NIST proposals. The strengths of LIGA are short ciphertext sizes and (relatively) small key sizes. Further, LIGA guarantees correct decryption and has no decryption failure rate. It is not based on hiding the structure of a code. Since there are efficient and constant-time algorithms for encoding and decoding Gabidulin codes, timing attacks on the encryption and decryption algorithms can be easily prevented.

Revisiting NIZK-Based Technique for Chosen-Ciphertext Security: Security Analysis and Corrected Proofs

Non-interactive zero-knowledge (NIZK) proofs for chosen-ciphertext security are generally considered to give an impractical construction. An interesting recent work by Seo, Abdalla, Lee, and Park (Information Sciences, July 2019) proposed an efficient semi-generic conversion method for achieving chosen-ciphertext security based on NIZK proofs in the random oracle model. The recent work by Seo et al. demonstrated that the semi-generic conversion method transforms a one-way (OW)-secure key encapsulation mechanism (KEM) into a chosen-ciphertext secure KEM while preserving tight security reduction. This paper shows that the security analysis of the semi-generic conversion method has a flaw, which comes from the OW security condition of the underlying KEM. Without changing the conversion method, this paper presents a revised security proof under the changed conditions that (1) the underlying KEM must be chosen-plaintext secure in terms of indistinguishability and (2) an NIZK proof derived from the underlying KEM via the Fiat–Shamir transform must have the properties of zero-knowledge and simulation soundness. This work extended the security proof strategy to the case of identity-based KEM (IBKEM) and also revise the security proof for IBKEM of previous method by Seo et al. Finally, this work gives a corrected security proof by applying the new proofs to several existing (IB)KEMs.

Exploring Parallelism to Improve the Performance of FrodoKEM in Hardware

FrodoKEM is a lattice-based key encapsulation mechanism, currently a semi-finalist in NIST’s post-quantum standardisation effort. A condition for these candidates is to use NIST standards for sources of randomness (i.e. seed-expanding), and as such most candidates utilise SHAKE, an XOF defined in the SHA-3 standard. However, for many of the candidates, this module is a significant implementation bottleneck. Trivium is a lightweight, ISO standard stream cipher which performs well in hardware and has been used in previous hardware designs for lattice-based cryptography. This research proposes optimised designs for FrodoKEM, concentrating on high throughput by parallelising the matrix multiplication operations within the cryptographic scheme. This process is eased by the use of Trivium due to its higher throughput and lower area consumption. The parallelisations proposed also complement the addition of first-order masking to the decapsulation module. Overall, we significantly increase the throughput of FrodoKEM; for encapsulation we see a 16times speed-up, achieving 825 operations per second, and for decapsulation we see a 14times speed-up, achieving 763 operations per second, compared to the previous state of the art, whilst also maintaining a similar FPGA area footprint of less than 2000 slices.

Volatile aroma compounds of sugarcane molasses as affected by spray drying at low and high temperature

Sugarcane molasses was chosen as an example material for the investigation of the influence of spray drying approach (conventional high temperature and a developed low temperature drying method which applies dehumidified air as a process gas) and the presence of drying carrier on volatile aroma compounds (VACs). Among 28 identified VACs 10 were chosen for detailed investigation. The influence of drying depended, apart from two mentioned factors, also on the type/origin of VACs and particle morphology. In the case of compounds connected with the fermentation process, the retention was higher after high temperature spray drying. On the contrary, VACs which could be additionally created during spray drying, thus Maillard reaction and caramelization reaction products, were more abundant in samples dried at lower temperature. As was explained, this contradictory phenomenon could be related to the higher evaporative loss at higher temperature, and also the fact that particles created at higher temperature were partially destroyed (as evident from the SEM photos). The presence of carrier increased the content of VACs after low temperature spray drying, which was connected to the encapsulation mechanisms of high molecular weight material. Thus, the most beneficial was the simultaneous application of carrier and low temperature spray drying approach.