---
_id: '11476'
abstract:
- lang: eng
text: "Messaging platforms like Signal are widely deployed and provide strong security
in an asynchronous setting. It is a challenging problem to construct a protocol
with similar security guarantees that can efficiently scale to large groups. A
major bottleneck are the frequent key rotations users need to perform to achieve
post compromise forward security.\r\n\r\nIn current proposals – most notably in
TreeKEM (which is part of the IETF’s Messaging Layer Security (MLS) protocol draft)
– for users in a group of size n to rotate their keys, they must each craft a
message of size log(n) to be broadcast to the group using an (untrusted) delivery
server.\r\n\r\nIn larger groups, having users sequentially rotate their keys requires
too much bandwidth (or takes too long), so variants allowing any T≤n users to
simultaneously rotate their keys in just 2 communication rounds have been suggested
(e.g. “Propose and Commit” by MLS). Unfortunately, 2-round concurrent updates
are either damaging or expensive (or both); i.e. they either result in future
operations being more costly (e.g. via “blanking” or “tainting”) or are costly
themselves requiring Ω(T) communication for each user [Bienstock et al., TCC’20].\r\n\r\nIn
this paper we propose CoCoA; a new scheme that allows for T concurrent updates
that are neither damaging nor costly. That is, they add no cost to future operations
yet they only require Ω(log2(n)) communication per user. To circumvent the [Bienstock
et al.] lower bound, CoCoA increases the number of rounds needed to complete all
updates from 2 up to (at most) log(n); though typically fewer rounds are needed.\r\n\r\nThe
key insight of our protocol is the following: in the (non-concurrent version of)
TreeKEM, a delivery server which gets T concurrent update requests will approve
one and reject the remaining T−1. In contrast, our server attempts to apply all
of them. If more than one user requests to rotate the same key during a round,
the server arbitrarily picks a winner. Surprisingly, we prove that regardless
of how the server chooses the winners, all previously compromised users will recover
after at most log(n) such update rounds.\r\n\r\nTo keep the communication complexity
low, CoCoA is a server-aided CGKA. That is, the delivery server no longer blindly
forwards packets, but instead actively computes individualized packets tailored
to each user. As the server is untrusted, this change requires us to develop new
mechanisms ensuring robustness of the protocol."
acknowledgement: We thank Marta Mularczyk and Yiannis Tselekounis for their very helpful
feedback on an earlier draft of this paper.
alternative_title:
- LNCS
article_processing_charge: No
author:
- first_name: Joël
full_name: Alwen, Joël
last_name: Alwen
- first_name: Benedikt
full_name: Auerbach, Benedikt
id: D33D2B18-E445-11E9-ABB7-15F4E5697425
last_name: Auerbach
orcid: 0000-0002-7553-6606
- first_name: Miguel
full_name: Cueto Noval, Miguel
id: ffc563a3-f6e0-11ea-865d-e3cce03d17cc
last_name: Cueto Noval
- first_name: Karen
full_name: Klein, Karen
id: 3E83A2F8-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87
last_name: Klein
- first_name: Guillermo
full_name: Pascual Perez, Guillermo
id: 2D7ABD02-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87
last_name: Pascual Perez
- first_name: Krzysztof Z
full_name: Pietrzak, Krzysztof Z
id: 3E04A7AA-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87
last_name: Pietrzak
orcid: 0000-0002-9139-1654
- first_name: Michael
full_name: Walter, Michael
last_name: Walter
citation:
ama: 'Alwen J, Auerbach B, Cueto Noval M, et al. CoCoA: Concurrent continuous group
key agreement. In: Advances in Cryptology – EUROCRYPT 2022. Vol 13276.
Cham: Springer Nature; 2022:815–844. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-07085-3_28'
apa: 'Alwen, J., Auerbach, B., Cueto Noval, M., Klein, K., Pascual Perez, G., Pietrzak,
K. Z., & Walter, M. (2022). CoCoA: Concurrent continuous group key agreement.
In Advances in Cryptology – EUROCRYPT 2022 (Vol. 13276, pp. 815–844). Cham:
Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07085-3_28'
chicago: 'Alwen, Joël, Benedikt Auerbach, Miguel Cueto Noval, Karen Klein, Guillermo
Pascual Perez, Krzysztof Z Pietrzak, and Michael Walter. “CoCoA: Concurrent Continuous
Group Key Agreement.” In Advances in Cryptology – EUROCRYPT 2022, 13276:815–844.
Cham: Springer Nature, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07085-3_28.'
ieee: 'J. Alwen et al., “CoCoA: Concurrent continuous group key agreement,”
in Advances in Cryptology – EUROCRYPT 2022, Trondheim, Norway, 2022, vol.
13276, pp. 815–844.'
ista: 'Alwen J, Auerbach B, Cueto Noval M, Klein K, Pascual Perez G, Pietrzak KZ,
Walter M. 2022. CoCoA: Concurrent continuous group key agreement. Advances in
Cryptology – EUROCRYPT 2022. EUROCRYPT: Annual International Conference on the
Theory and Applications of Cryptology and Information Security, LNCS, vol. 13276,
815–844.'
mla: 'Alwen, Joël, et al. “CoCoA: Concurrent Continuous Group Key Agreement.” Advances
in Cryptology – EUROCRYPT 2022, vol. 13276, Springer Nature, 2022, pp. 815–844,
doi:10.1007/978-3-031-07085-3_28.'
short: J. Alwen, B. Auerbach, M. Cueto Noval, K. Klein, G. Pascual Perez, K.Z. Pietrzak,
M. Walter, in:, Advances in Cryptology – EUROCRYPT 2022, Springer Nature, Cham,
2022, pp. 815–844.
conference:
end_date: 2022-06-03
location: Trondheim, Norway
name: 'EUROCRYPT: Annual International Conference on the Theory and Applications
of Cryptology and Information Security'
start_date: 2022-05-30
date_created: 2022-06-30T16:48:00Z
date_published: 2022-05-25T00:00:00Z
date_updated: 2023-08-03T07:25:02Z
day: '25'
department:
- _id: GradSch
- _id: KrPi
doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-07085-3_28
ec_funded: 1
external_id:
isi:
- '000832305300028'
intvolume: ' 13276'
isi: 1
language:
- iso: eng
main_file_link:
- open_access: '1'
url: https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/251
month: '05'
oa: 1
oa_version: Preprint
page: 815–844
place: Cham
project:
- _id: 258AA5B2-B435-11E9-9278-68D0E5697425
call_identifier: H2020
grant_number: '682815'
name: Teaching Old Crypto New Tricks
- _id: 2564DBCA-B435-11E9-9278-68D0E5697425
call_identifier: H2020
grant_number: '665385'
name: International IST Doctoral Program
publication: Advances in Cryptology – EUROCRYPT 2022
publication_identifier:
eisbn:
- '9783031070853'
eissn:
- 1611-3349
isbn:
- '9783031070846'
issn:
- 0302-9743
publication_status: published
publisher: Springer Nature
quality_controlled: '1'
scopus_import: '1'
status: public
title: 'CoCoA: Concurrent continuous group key agreement'
type: conference
user_id: 4359f0d1-fa6c-11eb-b949-802e58b17ae8
volume: 13276
year: '2022'
...