New lattice-based protocols for proving correctness of a shuffle

Abstract

In an electronic voting procedure, mixing networks are used to ensure anonymity of the casted votes. Each node of the network re-encrypts the input and randomly permutes it in a process named shuffle, and must prove that the process was applied honestly. State-of-the-art classical proofs achieve logarithmic communication complexity on N (the number of votes to be shuffled) but they are based on assumptions which are weak against quantum computers. To maintain security in a post-quantum scenario, new proofs are based on different mathematical assumptions, such as lattice-based problems. Nonetheless, the best lattice-based protocols to ensure verifiable shuffling have linear communication complexity on N. In this thesis we propose the first sub-linear post-quantum proof for the correctness of a shuffe, for which we have mainly used two ideas: arithmetic circuit satisfiability and Benes networks to model a permutation of N elements.