Information-theoretically secure protocols and security under composition

We investigate the question of whether security of protocols in the information-theoretic setting (where the adversary is computationally unbounded) implies security under concurrent composition. This question is motivated by the folklore that all known protocols that are secure in the information-theoretic setting are indeed secure under concurrent composition. We provide answers to this question for a number of different settings (i.e., considering perfect versus statistical security, and concurrent composition with adaptive versus fixed inputs). Our results enhance the understanding of what is necessary for obtaining security under composition, as well as providing tools (i.e., composition theorems) that can be used for proving the security of protocols under composition while considering only the standard stand-alone definitions of security.

Authors

• Eyal Kushilevitz
• Yehuda Lindell
• Tal Rabin

Keywords

• information-theoretic security
• protocol composition
• secure computation
• theory of cryptography