The random oracle methodology, revisited

  • Authors:
  • Ran Canetti;Oded Goldreich;Shai Halevi

  • Affiliations:
  • IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, Hawthorne, New York;Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel;IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, Hawthorne, New York

  • Venue:
  • Journal of the ACM (JACM)
  • Year:
  • 2004

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Abstract

We take a critical look at the relationship between the security of cryptographic schemes in the Random Oracle Model, and the security of the schemes that result from implementing the random oracle by so called "cryptographic hash functions".The main result of this article is a negative one: There exist signature and encryption schemes that are secure in the Random Oracle Model, but for which any implementation of the random oracle results in insecure schemes. In the process of devising the above schemes, we consider possible definitions for the notion of a "good implementation" of a random oracle, pointing out limitations and challenges.