Chosen ciphertext attack

A chosen-ciphertext attack (CCA) is an attack model for cryptanalysis where the cryptanalyst can gather information by obtaining the decryptions of chosen ciphertexts. From these pieces of information the adversary can attempt to recover the hidden secret key used for decryption.

For formal definitions of security against chosen-ciphertext attacks, see for example: Michael Luby and Mihir Bellare et al.

A number of otherwise secure schemes can be defeated under chosen-ciphertext attack. For example, the El Gamal cryptosystem is semantically secure under chosen-plaintext attack, but this semantic security can be trivially defeated under a chosen-ciphertext attack. Early versions of RSA padding used in the SSL protocol were vulnerable to a sophisticated adaptive chosen-ciphertext attack which revealed SSL session keys. Chosen-ciphertext attacks have implications for some self-synchronizing stream ciphers as well. Designers of tamper-resistant cryptographic smart cards must be particularly cognizant of these attacks, as these devices may be completely under the control of an adversary, who can issue a large number of chosen-ciphertexts in an attempt to recover the hidden secret key.

It was not clear at all whether public key cryptosystems can withstand the chosen ciphertext attack until the initial breakthrough work of Moni Naor and Moti Yung in 1990, which suggested a mode of dual encryption with integrity proof (now known as the "Naor-Yung" encryption paradigm). This work made understanding of the notion of security against chosen ciphertext attack much clearer than before and open the research direction of constructing systems with various protections against variants of the attack.

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