Symmetric Blind Decryption with Perfect Secrecy

Abstract

A blind decryption scheme enables a user to query decryptions from a decryption server without revealing information about the plaintext message. Such schemes are useful, for example, for the implementation of privacy preserving encrypted file storages and payment systems. In terms of functionality, blind decryption is close to oblivious transfer. For noiseless channels, information-theoretically secure oblivious transfer is impossible. However, in this paper we show that this is not the case for blind decryption. We formulate a definition of perfect secrecy of symmetric blind decryption for the following setting: at most one of the scheme participants is a malicious observer. We also devise a symmetric blind decryption scheme based on modular arithmetic on a ring $\mathbb{Z}_{p^2}$, where $p$ is a prime, and show that it satisfies our notion of perfect secrecy.