Non-malleable codes from two-source extractors

Abstract

We construct an efficient information-theoretically non-malleable code in the split-state model for one-bit messages. Non-malleable codes were introduced recently by Dziembowski, Pietrzak and Wichs (ICS 2010), as a general tool for storing messages securely on hardware that can be subject to tampering attacks. Informally, a code (Enc:M → L x R, Dec:L x R → M) is non-malleable in the split-state model if any adversary, by manipulating independently L and R (where (L,R) is an encoding of some message M), cannot obtain an encoding of a message M′ that is not equal to M but is "related" M in some way. Until now it was unknown how to construct an information-theoretically secure code with such a property, even for M = {0, 1}. Our construction solves this problem. Additionally, it is leakage-resilient, and the amount of leakage that we can tolerate can be an arbitrary fraction ξ < 1/4 of the length of the codeword. Our code is based on the inner-product two-source extractor, but in general it can be instantiated by any two-source extractor that has large output and has the property of being flexible, which is a new notion that we define. We also show that the non-malleable codes for one-bit messages have an equivalent, perhaps simpler characterization, namely such codes can be defined as follows: if M is chosen uniformly from {0,1} then the probability (in the experiment described above) that the output message M′ is not equal to M can be at most 1/2 + ε. © 2013 International Association for Cryptologic Research.