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 to a given twisted Edwards curve defined over the scalar field of the BLS12-377 curve, thus providing a simpler abstraction than the curve itself by eliminating the curve’s cofactor.
Poseidon is a hash function that works natively over values in a prime field and that can be expressed compactly in arithmetic circuits.
The Public Report for this review may be downloaded below:
Jennifer Fernick is the Global Head of Research at NCC Group. She can be found on Twitter at @enjenneer.