A Note on "Efficient Algorithms for Secure Outsourcing of Bilinear Pairings"

TL;DR

This paper critically examines a secure outsourcing scheme for bilinear pairings, revealing vulnerabilities in its verification process and questioning its underlying assumptions about untrusted programs.

Contribution

It identifies flaws in the verification equations of a prior scheme and discusses the realism of its untrusted programs model.

Findings

Verification equations cannot filter out malformed values

The untrusted programs model may be somewhat artificial

Highlights the need for more robust verification methods

Abstract

We show that the verifying equations in the scheme [Theoretical Computer Science, 562 (2015), 112-121] cannot filter out some malformed values returned by the malicious servers. We also remark that the two untrusted programs model adopted in the scheme is somewhat artificial, and discuss some reasonable scenarios for outsourcing computations.