How to break a "Secure" oblivious transfer protocol

  • Authors:
  • Donald Beaver

  • Affiliations:
  • Penn State University, State College, PA

  • Venue:
  • EUROCRYPT'92 Proceedings of the 11th annual international conference on Theory and application of cryptographic techniques
  • Year:
  • 1992

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Abstract

We show how to break a protocol for Oblivious Transfer presented at Eurocrypt 90 [11]. Armed with a new set of definitions for proving the security of interactive computations, we found difficulties in proving the protocol secure. These difficulties led us to a simple attack that breaks the OT protocol in a subtle but fundamental way. The error that we found may be present in a wide variety of secure protocols. It reveals a fundamental flaw in the traditional definition of Oblivious Transfer itself.