English

Beyond Algorithmic Proofs: Towards Implementation-Level Provable Security

Cryptography and Security 2025-08-05 v1

Abstract

While traditional cryptographic research focuses on algorithm-level provable security, many real-world attacks exploit weaknesses in system implementations, such as memory mismanagement, poor entropy sources, and insecure key lifecycles. Existing approaches address these risks in isolation but lack a unified, verifiable framework for modeling implementation-layer security. In this work, we propose Implementation-Level Provable Security, a new paradigm that defines security in terms of structurally verifiable resilience against real-world attack surfaces during deployment. To demonstrate its feasibility, we present SEER (Secure and Efficient Encryption-based Erasure via Ransomware), a file destruction system that repurposes and reinforces the encryption core of Babuk ransomware. SEER incorporates key erasure, entropy validation, and execution consistency checks to ensure a well-constrained, auditable attack surface. Our evaluation shows that SEER achieves strong irrecoverability guarantees while maintaining practical performance. This work demonstrates a shift from abstract theoretical models toward practically verifiable implementation-layer security.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2508.01144,
  title  = {Beyond Algorithmic Proofs: Towards Implementation-Level Provable Security},
  author = {Jiahui Shang and Luning Zhang and Zhongxiang Zheng},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.01144},
  year   = {2025}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T04:30:28.411Z