There are several lines of research in provable security. One is to establish the "correct" definition of security for a given, intuitively understood task. Another is to suggest constructions and proofs based on general assumptions as much as possible, for instance the existence of a one-way function. A major open problem is to establish such proofs based on P ≠ NP, since the existence of one-way functions is not known to follow from the P ≠ NP conjecture.
Several researchers have found mathematical fallacies in proofs that had been used to make claims about the security of important protocols. In the following partial list of such researchers, their names are followed by first a reference to the original paper with the purported proof and then a reference to the paper in which the researchers reported on flaws:
V. Shoup;
A. J. Menezes;
A. Jha and M. Nandi;
D. Galindo;
T. Iwata, K. Ohashi, and K. Minematsu;
M. Nandi;
J.-S. Coron and D. Naccache;
D. Chakraborty, V. Hernández-Jiménez, and P. Sarkar;
P. Gaži and U. Maurer;
S. A. Kakvi and E. Kiltz;
and T. Holenstein, R. Künzler, and S. Tessaro.
In 2007, Koblitz published "The Uneasy Relationship Between Mathematics and Cryptography", which contained some controversial statements about provable security and other topics. Researchers Oded Goldreich, Boaz Barak, Jonathan Katz, Hugo Krawczyk, and Avi Wigderson wrote letters responding to Koblitz's article, which were published in the November 2007 and January 2008 issues of the journal. Katz, who is coauthor of a highly regarded cryptography textbook, called Koblitz's article "snobbery at its purest";: 1455 and Wigderson, who is a permanent member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, accused Koblitz of "slander".: 7
Classical provable security primarily aimed at studying the relationship between asymptotically defined objects. Instead, practice-oriented provable security is concerned with concrete objects of cryptographic practice, such as hash functions, block ciphers, and protocols as they are deployed and used. Practice oriented provable security uses concrete security to analyse practical constructions with fixed key sizes. "Exact security" or "concrete security" is the name given to provable security reductions where one quantifies security by computing precise bounds on computational effort, rather than an asymptotic bound which is guaranteed to hold for "sufficiently large" values of the security parameter.
Bellare, Mihir; Rogaway, Phillip (1995). "Optimal asymmetric encryption". Advances in Cryptology — EUROCRYPT'94. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 950. pp. 92–111. doi:10.1007/BFb0053428. ISBN 978-3-540-60176-0. 978-3-540-60176-0
Shoup, Victor (2002), "OAEP reconsidered", Journal of Cryptology, 15 (4): 223–249, doi:10.1007/s00145-002-0133-9, S2CID 26919974 /wiki/Doi_(identifier)
Krawczyk, Hugo (2005). "HMQV: A High-Performance Secure Diffie-Hellman Protocol". Advances in Cryptology – CRYPTO 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 3621. pp. 546–566. doi:10.1007/11535218_33. ISBN 978-3-540-28114-6. 978-3-540-28114-6
Menezes, Alfred J. (2007), "Another look at HMQV", Journal of Mathematical Cryptology, 1: 47–64, doi:10.1515/JMC.2007.004, S2CID 15540513 /wiki/Doi_(identifier)
Bellare, Mihir; Pietrzak, Krzysztof; Rogaway, Phillip (2005). "Improved Security Analyses for CBC MACs". Advances in Cryptology – CRYPTO 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 3621. pp. 527–545. doi:10.1007/11535218_32. ISBN 978-3-540-28114-6.; and Pietrzak, Krzysztof (2006), "A Tight Bound for EMAC", Automata, Languages and Programming, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 4052, pp. 168–179, doi:10.1007/11787006_15, ISBN 978-3-540-35907-4 978-3-540-28114-6978-3-540-35907-4
Jha, Ashwin; Nandi, Mridul (2016), "Revisiting structure graphs: Applications to CBC-MAC and EMAC", Journal of Mathematical Cryptology, 10 (3–4): 157–180, doi:10.1515/jmc-2016-0030, S2CID 33121117 /wiki/Doi_(identifier)
Boneh, Dan; Franklin, Matthew (2003), "Identity-based encryption from the Weil pairing", SIAM Journal on Computing, 32 (3): 586–615, doi:10.1137/S0097539701398521 /wiki/Doi_(identifier)
Galindo, David (2005), "Boneh-Franklin Identity Based Encryption Revisited", Automata, Languages and Programming, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 3580, pp. 791–802, doi:10.1007/11523468_64, hdl:2066/33216, ISBN 978-3-540-27580-0, S2CID 605011 978-3-540-27580-0
McGrew, David A.; Viega, John (2004), "The Security and Performance of the Galois/Counter Mode (GCM) of Operation", Progress in Cryptology - INDOCRYPT 2004, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 3348, pp. 343–355, doi:10.1007/978-3-540-30556-9_27, ISBN 978-3-540-24130-0 978-3-540-24130-0
Iwata, Tetsu; Ohashi, Keisuke; Minematsu, Kazuhiko (2012). "Breaking and Repairing GCM Security Proofs". Advances in Cryptology – CRYPTO 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 7417. pp. 31–49. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-32009-5_3. ISBN 978-3-642-32008-8. 978-3-642-32008-8
Ristenpart, Thomas; Rogaway, Phillip (2007), "How to Enrich the Message Space of a Cipher", Fast Software Encryption, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 4593, pp. 101–118, doi:10.1007/978-3-540-74619-5_7, ISBN 978-3-540-74617-1 978-3-540-74617-1
Nandi, Mridul (2014). "XLS is Not a Strong Pseudorandom Permutation". Advances in Cryptology – ASIACRYPT 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 8874. pp. 478–490. doi:10.1007/978-3-662-45611-8_25. ISBN 978-3-662-45607-1. 978-3-662-45607-1
Bellare, Mihir; Garray, Juan A.; Rabin, Tal (1998). "Fast batch verification for modular exponentiation and digital signatures". Advances in Cryptology — EUROCRYPT'98. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 1403. pp. 236–250. doi:10.1007/BFb0054130. ISBN 978-3-540-64518-4. 978-3-540-64518-4
Coron, Jean-Sébastien; Naccache, David (1999), Public Key Cryptography, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 1560, pp. 197–203, doi:10.1007/3-540-49162-7, ISBN 978-3-540-65644-9, S2CID 11711093 978-3-540-65644-9
McGrew, David A.; Fluhrer, Scott R. (2007), "The Security of the Extended Codebook (XCB) Mode of Operation", Selected Areas in Cryptography, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 4876, pp. 311–327, doi:10.1007/978-3-540-77360-3_20, ISBN 978-3-540-77359-7 978-3-540-77359-7
Chakraborty, Debrup; Hernández-Jiménez, Vicente; Sarkar, Palash (2015), "Another look at XCB", Cryptography and Communications, 7 (4): 439–468, doi:10.1007/s12095-015-0127-8, S2CID 17251595 /wiki/Doi_(identifier)
Bellare, Mihir; Rogaway, Phillip (2006). "The Security of Triple Encryption and a Framework for Code-Based Game-Playing Proofs". Advances in Cryptology - EUROCRYPT 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 4004. pp. 409–426. doi:10.1007/11761679_25. ISBN 978-3-540-34546-6. 978-3-540-34546-6
Gaži, Peter; Maurer, Ueli (2009). "Cascade Encryption Revisited". Advances in Cryptology – ASIACRYPT 2009. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 5912. pp. 37–51. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-10366-7_3. ISBN 978-3-642-10365-0. 978-3-642-10365-0
Coron, Jean-Sébastien (2002). "Optimal Security Proofs for PSS and Other Signature Schemes". Advances in Cryptology — EUROCRYPT 2002. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 2332. pp. 272–287. doi:10.1007/3-540-46035-7_18. ISBN 978-3-540-43553-2. 978-3-540-43553-2
Kakvi, Saqib A.; Kiltz, Eike (2012). "Optimal Security Proofs for Full Domain Hash, Revisited". Advances in Cryptology – EUROCRYPT 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 7237. pp. 537–553. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-29011-4_32. ISBN 978-3-642-29010-7. 978-3-642-29010-7
Coron, Jean-Sébastien; Patarin, Jacques; Seurin, Yannick (2008). "The Random Oracle Model and the Ideal Cipher Model Are Equivalent". Advances in Cryptology – CRYPTO 2008. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 5157. pp. 1–20. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-85174-5_1. ISBN 978-3-540-85173-8. 978-3-540-85173-8
Holenstein, Thomas; Künzler, Robin; Tessaro, Stefano (2011), "The equivalence of the random oracle model and the ideal cipher model, revisited", Proceedings of the forty-third annual ACM symposium on Theory of computing, pp. 89–98, arXiv:1011.1264, doi:10.1145/1993636.1993650, ISBN 9781450306911, S2CID 2960550 9781450306911
Koblitz, Neal; Menezes, Alfred (2019). "Critical perspectives on provable security: Fifteen years of 'Another look' papers". Advances in Mathematics of Communications. 13 (4): 517–558. doi:10.3934/amc.2019034. https://doi.org/10.3934%2Famc.2019034
These papers are all available at "Another look at provable security". Retrieved 12 April 2018. http://anotherlook.ca
Goldreich, Oded (2003). Foundations of Cryptography. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521791724. 9780521791724
Koblitz, Neal; Menezes, Alfred J. (2007), "Another look at "provable security"", Journal of Cryptology, 20 (1): 3–37, doi:10.1007/s00145-005-0432-z, S2CID 7601573 /wiki/Doi_(identifier)
"On post-modern cryptography". Retrieved 12 April 2018. https://eprint.iacr.org/2006/461
"On post-modern cryptography". Retrieved 12 April 2018. https://eprint.iacr.org/2006/461
Koblitz, Neal (2007), "The uneasy relationship between mathematics and cryptography" (PDF), Notices Amer. Math. Soc., 54 (8): 972–979 https://www.ams.org/notices/200708/tx070800972p.pdf
"Letters to the Editor" (PDF), Notices Amer. Math. Soc., 54 (12): 1454–1455, 2007 https://www.ams.org/notices/200711/tx071101454p.pdf
"Letters to the Editor" (PDF), Notices Amer. Math. Soc., 55 (1): 6–7, 2008 https://www.ams.org/notices/200801/tx080100006p.pdf
Katz, Jonathan; Lindell, Yehuda (2008). Introduction to Modern Cryptography. Chapman & Hall/CRC. ISBN 9781584885511. 9781584885511
"Letters to the Editor" (PDF), Notices Amer. Math. Soc., 54 (12): 1454–1455, 2007 https://www.ams.org/notices/200711/tx071101454p.pdf
"Letters to the Editor" (PDF), Notices Amer. Math. Soc., 55 (1): 6–7, 2008 https://www.ams.org/notices/200801/tx080100006p.pdf
Damgård, I. (2007). "A "proof-reading" of Some Issues in Cryptography". Automata, Languages and Programming. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 4596. pp. 2–11. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-73420-8_2. ISBN 978-3-540-73419-2. 978-3-540-73419-2
"Shtetl-Optimized". scottaaronson.com. September 2007. http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=268
Koblitz, Neal; Menezes, Alfred J. (2010), "The brave new world of bodacious assumptions in cryptography" (PDF), Notices Amer. Math. Soc., 57: 357–365 https://www.ams.org/notices/201003/rtx100300357p.pdf
"RSA Conference 2010 USA: The Cryptographers Panel". YouTube. 9 March 2010. Archived from the original on 2021-12-22. Retrieved 9 April 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7nOsqgIzew
Rogaway, Phillip. "Practice-Oriented Provable Security and the Social Construction of Cryptography". Unpublished Essay Corresponding to an Invited Talk at EUROCRYPT 2009. May 6, 2009.