The complete subtree (CS) method is widely accepted for the broadcast encryption. A new method for assigning keys in the CS method is proposed in this paper. The essential idea behind the proposed method is to use two trapdoor permutations. Using the trapdoor information, the key management center computes and assigns a key to each terminal so that the terminal can derive all information necessary in the CS method. A terminal has to keep just one key, while log2 N + 1 keys were needed in the original CS method where N is the number of all terminals. The permutations to be used need to satisfy a certain property which is similar to but slightly different from the claw-free property. The needed property, named strongly semi-claw-free property, is formalized in terms of probabilistic polynomial time algorithm, and its relation to the claw-free property is discussed. It is also shown that if the used permutations fulfill the strongly semi-claw-free property, then the proposed method is secure against attacks of malicious users.

Verifiable random functions (VRF), proposed in 1999, and selectively convertible undeniable signature (SCUS) schemes, proposed in 1990, are apparently thought as independent primitives in the literature. In this paper, we show that they are tightly related in the following sense: VRF is exactly SCUS; and the reverse also holds true under a condition. This directly yields several deterministic SCUS schemes based on existing VRF constructions. In addition, we create a new probabilistic SCUS scheme, which is very compact. We build efficient confirmation and disavowal protocols for the proposed SCUS schemes, based on what we call zero-knowledge protocols for generalized DDH and non-DDH. These zero-knowledge protocols are built either sequential, concurrent, or universally composable.

To protect user privacy and establish self-information control rights, service providers must notify users of their privacy policies and obtain their consent in advance. The frameworks that impose these requirements are mandatory. Although originally designed to protect user privacy, obtaining user consent in advance has become a mere formality. These problems are induced by the gap between service providers' privacy policies, which prioritize the observance of laws and guidelines, and user expectations which are to easily understand how their data will be handled. To reduce this gap, we construct a tool supporting users in reading privacy policies in Japanese. We designed the tool to present users with separate unique expressions containing relevant information to improve the display format of the privacy policy and render it more comprehensive for Japanese users. To accurately extract the unique expressions from privacy policies, we created training data for machine learning for the constructed tool. The constructed tool provides a summary of privacy policies for users to help them understand the policies of interest. Subsequently, we assess the effectiveness of the constructed tool in experiments and follow-up questionnaires. Our findings reveal that the constructed tool enhances the users' subjective understanding of the services they read about and their awareness of the related risks. We expect that the developed tool will help users better understand the privacy policy content and and make educated decisions based on their understanding of how service providers intend to use their personal data.

We aim at constructing adaptive oblivious transfer protocols, enjoying fully simulatable security, from various well-known assumptions such as DDH, d-Linear, QR, and DCR. To this end, we present two generic constructions of adaptive OT, one of which utilizes verifiable shuffles together with threshold decryption schemes, while the other uses permutation networks together with what we call loosely-homomorphic key encapsulation schemes. The constructions follow a novel designing approach called “blind permutation”, which completely differs from existing ones. We then show that specific choices of the building blocks lead to concrete adaptive OT protocols with fully simulatable security in the standard model under the targeted assumptions. Our generic methods can be extended to build universally composable (UC) secure OT protocols, with a loss in efficiency.

The complete subtree (CS) method is one of the most well-known broadcast encryptions which do not enforce the receivers to keep "online." This paper is to reduce the size of secret information which must be stored in a terminal of the method. In the original CS method, the size of the secret information increases as the number of terminals increases. It is shown in this paper that, by making use of a one-way trapdoor permutation, we can make the size constant regardless of the number of terminals. The security of the proposed scheme is investigated, and detailed comparison with other similar schemes is presented. The proposed scheme is suitable for practical implementations of the CS method.