During the summer of 2022, Penumbra Labs, Inc. engaged NCC Group to conduct a cryptographic security assessment of two items: (i) the specification and two implementations of the decaf377 group, and (ii) a methodology and implementation of parameter generation for the Poseidon hash function. Decaf377 is a prime-order group obtained by applying the Decaf construction … Continue reading Public Report – Penumbra Labs Decaf377 Implementation and Poseidon Parameter Selection Review
Category: Public Report
Public Report – Threshold ECDSA Cryptography Review
In March 2022, DFINITY engaged NCC Group to conduct a security and cryptography review of a threshold ECDSA implementation, which follows a novel approach described in the reference paper entitled "Design and analysis of a distributed ECDSA signing service" and available on the IACR ePrint archive at https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/506. The threshold ECDSA protocol will be deployed into … Continue reading Public Report – Threshold ECDSA Cryptography Review
Public Report – Lantern and Replica Security Assessment
Editor's Note: This security assessment was conducted by a team of our consultants, one of whom, Victor Hora, tragically and unexpectedly passed away a few weeks ago. As we publish this report, we miss our dear colleague immensely and celebrate Victor's life and his wonderful influence on the world. He was a talented security consultant, … Continue reading Public Report – Lantern and Replica Security Assessment
Public Report – go-cose Security Assessment
In April and May 2022, NCC Group Cryptography Services engaged in a security and cryptography assessment reviewing Microsoft's contributions to the go-cose library, a Go library implementing signing and verification for CBOR Object Signing and Encryption (COSE), as specified in RFC 8152. This library focuses on a minimal feature set to enable the signing and verification of … Continue reading Public Report – go-cose Security Assessment
Public Report – Google Enterprise API Security Assessment
During the autumn of 2021, Google engaged NCC Group to perform a review of the Android 12 Enterprise API to evaluate its compliance with the Security Technical Implementation Guides (STIG) matrix provided by Google. This assessment was also performed with reference to the Common Criteria Protection Profile for Mobile Device Fundamentals (PPMDF), from which the … Continue reading Public Report – Google Enterprise API Security Assessment
Public Report – O(1) Labs Mina Client SDK, Signature Library and Base Components Cryptography and Implementation Review
During October 2021, O(1) Labs engaged NCC Group's Cryptography Services team to conduct a cryptography and implementation review of selected components within the main source code repository for the Mina project. Mina implements a cryptocurrency with a lightweight and constant-sized blockchain, where the code is primarily written in OCaml. The selected components involved the client … Continue reading Public Report – O(1) Labs Mina Client SDK, Signature Library and Base Components Cryptography and Implementation Review
Public Report – WhatsApp opaque-ke Cryptographic Implementation Review
In June 2021, WhatsApp engaged NCC Group to conduct a security assessment of the 'opaque-ke' library, an open source Rust implementation of the OPAQUE password authenticated key exchange protocol. The protocol is designed to allow password-based authentication in such a way that a server does not actually learn the plaintext value of the client's password, … Continue reading Public Report – WhatsApp opaque-ke Cryptographic Implementation Review
Public Report – Zendoo Proof Verifier Cryptography Review
During the summer of 2021, Horizen Labs engaged NCC Group to conduct a cryptography review of Zendoo protocol’s proof verifier. This system generates and verifies modified Marlin proofs with a polynomial commitment scheme based on the hardness of the discrete logarithm problem in prime-order groups. The system also provides optimized batch verification of accumulated proofs. … Continue reading Public Report – Zendoo Proof Verifier Cryptography Review
Public Report – Zcash NU5 Cryptography Review
In March 2021, Electric Coin Co. engaged NCC Group to perform a review of the upcoming network protocol upgrade NU5 to the Zcash protocol (codenamed "Orchard"). The review was to be performed over multiple phases: first, the specification document changes and the relevant ZIPs, then, in June 2021, the implementation itself. The Public Report for … Continue reading Public Report – Zcash NU5 Cryptography Review
Public Report – WhatsApp End-to-End Encrypted Backups Security Assessment
During the summer of 2021, WhatsApp engaged NCC Group's Cryptography Services team to conduct an independent security assessment of its End-to-End Encrypted Backups project. End-to-End Encrypted Backups is an hardware security module (HSM) based key vault solution that aims to primarily support encrypted backup of WhatsApp user data. This assessment was performed remotely, as a … Continue reading Public Report – WhatsApp End-to-End Encrypted Backups Security Assessment